Anniversary Gifts - Tenth Anniversary

You've finally made it. The big one-oh. Ten years of wedded bliss and you finally get the chance to give your spouse a really great anniversary gift. So what do they throw at you for the traditional options? Tin and Aluminum. No, that is not a typo and you're not being punked. You're probably wondering who the joker is who thought these up. Well, don't bother trying to find out. Whoever it is has left people scratching their heads for centuries trying to understand how such an important anniversary can have such jokes for gifts. Fortunately, the modern day gift idea is a lot better. We'll cover both of these in this article.

Okay, maybe the traditional gift ideas are a bit odd but believe it or not, you can actually come up with a few okay ideas if you just use a little imagination. For starters, you can get your spouse some jewelry made out of tin. She or he will certainly be surprised. If you want to be a little more serious you can get your spouse an aluminum watch. Yes, believe it or not, they do make these. You just have to know where to look. Go to about.com and you'll find a few places.

This is a little sneaky, but many of the more exotic teas and coffees come in tin or aluminum cans. So you can run on down to your specialty coffee house and pick up a couple of cans. Technically, it's still within the parameters of the traditional gift idea. After the tea or coffee is gone you can always use the can for holding pencils.

Another sneaky thing you can do is look for a puzzle or game that comes in a tin or aluminum can. There are actually quite a few of these today including a very unique Monopoly set that comes in a large square tin can.

Something that is a little more common, is an aluminum or tin jewelry box. If you want to really surprise your spouse, you can get some jewelry to put inside the box. If he or she complains that it's not part of the allowed gifts you simply say that the jewelry came with the box. You might get some dirty looks but you're sure to get a smile afterwards.

If you want to be a little more practical, you can always get some aluminum tableware. It may not be terribly romantic, but sometimes practical is nice. You can get a variety of items for the table in aluminum such as carafes, stuff to drink out of, platters, trays and pitchers.

If all of this is just a little too "they gotta do better than this for a tenth anniversary" then you might want to just go with the modern day gift which just happens to be diamond jewelry. You know what they say about diamonds being a girl's best friend. Since you're going to see diamond down the road again, you might want to go with something simple and relatively inexpensive. Otherwise, when you get to number fifty, it's going to be hard to outdo yourself.

And number ten was supposed to be an easy one. Talk about tough anniversary gifts.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Anniversary Gifts