A golden wedding anniversary gift for your parents

A personalised front page newspaper print of a past year, framed in natural wood on a pale wall

Fifty years married usually means a party, a card everyone signs, and the question of what to give two people who have been making a home together since before most of the family was born. Gold is the traditional material, but the present that stays on the wall tends to be the one built from their own story. Each print below starts from facts you already have or can find out quietly, and you see the finished artwork before you order.

The year they married, as a front page

The front page print looks back at one whole year, set as a British newspaper. A couple who married in 1976 get 1976: a lead story with its photograph, fifteen or more further stories, who was on the throne and in Downing Street, the song and the film of the year, and what a loaf, a pint of milk and a stamp cost. Prices are in pence after decimalisation in 1971 and in shillings and pence before it. You choose the banner and the paper's name, so it can carry their names or read like a wedding special. It is a look back at the year, not a reprint of a paper from the wedding day, and every story on it happened that year. Any year from 1925 to 2025 can be chosen.

Fifty years as a timeline

The Our Story timeline print takes three to sixteen moments, each with a year and a few words, and draws a picture for each one as you type. For a golden wedding the list is not hard to start: the wedding, the first house, each child, the move nobody wanted, the first grandchild. Mark the one or two that mattered most and they print larger. Exact dates are not needed; "Summer 1979" works, and so does leaving the year blank for the moment nobody can place. Our anniversary timeline guide has prompts if the list stalls.

The whole family, by year

If the day is really about everyone they have made, the family birth years print sets two to eight years large on the sheet with a name under each. Beside each year you can add one true line from it: the headline, the number one record or the price of a loaf. Put their two birth years first and the children's after. For a bigger family, the family tree print puts the two of them at the roots with the children, their partners and the grandchildren on the branches; our page on family tree gifts for grandparents covers how to lay it out.

Finding the details without asking them

  • The wedding year and place are on the marriage certificate and usually in the wedding album; an aunt or a best man will often know the rest.
  • Brothers and sisters can split the work: one gathers moments for the timeline, another checks how everyone's name is spelt.
  • Our guide to collecting family dates covers what to do when nobody agrees on a year.

One present from all of you

A single print from all the children is easier to get right than several separate presents, and the timeline's sign-off line at the foot can say who it is from. What you see in the preview is exactly what prints, so everyone can check the spelling on the same screen before it is ordered. Prints are made to order in the UK once you approve the artwork; check the delivery estimate on the product page against the date of the party. A parcel sent straight to your parents goes without a receipt or invoice inside.

See every anniversary and couples print, or our ruby wedding anniversary ideas for forty years.