It’s my parents wedding anniversary and my siblings and I have been considering how to celebrate the occasion with them. Choosing previous anniversary gifts, we’ve referred to the list of modern and traditional anniversary gifts, though we haven’t stuck rigidly to this. This year we are joining together mark their milestone anniversary. Here are some of our ideas:

Travel to Waterford

Go to wikipedia.org

We’re a large family and it’s sometimes difficult to properly chat and catch-up, so we’re looking at a family holiday to Tramore, a seaside town in County Waterford where my mother used to go on holiday as a child. We’ll have a few days there before heading inland to stay in the city of Waterford so we can visit the attractions and learn more about Irish history. Maybe this is the time we’ll find out the truth about connection between my mother’s family and the 1921 Pickardstown Ambush!

A keepsake

We want to mark our parents anniversary with a tangible gift too. Waterford is the home of Waterford Crystal where we’ll go on a factory tour and watch the molten crystal be hand-blown and hand-shaped. My parents can then choose an item (maybe a bowl, decanter, vase or set of tumblers) and we’ll have this personalised with an engraving of a quote from their wedding day.

An album of memories

We will all take photos of our holiday together. We’re arranging for formal portraits to be taken of our parents, our parents with their children and our parents with their children and their families. We’ll add our own candid shots from our trip and use an online photo site to create a hard-bound coffee table book that they can browse through when the holiday is over.

Create your own art

We are also going to create a list of everything our parents have taught us about love and marriage. The number of items on the list will match the number of years our parents have been married. My sister is good at calligraphy, so she will write these out and put it in a frame. It will be a good reminder for all of us when we visit our parent’s home.

Say it with flowers

It has been a tradition in our family to send our parents flowers on their anniversary. I’m sure the younger children will pick daisy flowers with Grandma and Grandad whilst we’re on holiday this year, but bouquets and cut flowers won’t be practical when we’re travelling. Therefore, we are looking at giving flowers a bit differently. A gold-plated rose symbolising their enduring love, and our love for them, can be proudly displayed in their cabinet at home.