What do you write in an anniversary card?

Mark the years without sounding generic. That is the whole task, and it is harder than a wedding card because you are writing to people who have had a lot of these.

An anniversary card competes with every previous anniversary card. "Happy Anniversary! Here's to many more" has been written to this couple perhaps thirty times. The only way out is to be specific.

The structure

• Name the year. Not just the number - the year as a thing. Twenty-five years is a silver wedding; forty is a ruby wedding. Using the name signals you know what this one is.
• Say one specific true thing. A memory, an observation, something you have watched them do. This is the entire card; everything else is packaging.
• Say what it means to you. Briefly, and only if it is true. Long-married couples are a reference point for the people around them, and almost nobody says so.

Three sentences. The middle one carries it.

What to write, by who you are

To your own spouse. Specific beats grand. One thing from this year rather than a summary of all of them - the summary is what everyone writes, and it says nothing about the year you actually had.

To parents or grandparents. This is the card that matters most and gets the least thought. Tell them something you learned from watching them, or something you remember from being small. They will keep it.

To friends. You can be lighter. Affectionate about them as a pair - the things they do, the routine everyone recognises - lands better than anything about marriage in general.

For a milestone with a name. At a silver, ruby, golden or diamond wedding, the year has a weight the in-between years do not. Acknowledge it plainly rather than reaching for grandeur.

What to leave out

• "Here's to many more." Written on nearly every card. Harmless, and it says nothing.
• Jokes about endurance. "How have you put up with him for forty years" is a joke about one of the recipients.
• Anything about who is next. Especially at family gatherings, especially in writing.
• The material, used as a pun. A tin joke on a tenth is a card written about the list, not the couple.

If you want to use the year's material

You can, and it works when it is a reference rather than a gag: ivory-coloured card for a fourteenth, gold ink for a fiftieth, something silver-edged for a twenty-fifth.

Worth knowing which material is which, because the lists disagree - the traditional British list gives pearl for the 30th while the modern list gives diamond. Our own lists take pearl from Debrett's. The full UK list sets out every year and where they part company.

For a first anniversary, and for a difficult one

The first. You were probably at the wedding, so the card can refer back to it. That is the one year where "this time last year" is a specific observation rather than filler.

A first anniversary after a bereavement. If one of the couple has died, the date still arrives. A card that acknowledges the anniversary rather than avoiding it is almost always welcome, and it should say the person's name. Say you are thinking of them on this particular date, and do not offer perspective.

Related: what to write in a wedding card, and what the anniversary symbols mean.

The wider path: the first years and the milestones.

Written by Craig Fearn, Printed Weddings.