Which flowers to buy for your anniversary

When you have an anniversary coming up, you want to get a sweet and sentimental gift. While every wedding anniversary has a symbol associated with it, anniversary flowers are a classic and romantic gift. You can even customize the floral gift to fit in with the milestone you and your partner are celebrating, but it helps to know which flowers to buy for every anniversary and how to choose the best anniversary flowers.

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anniversary flowers by year

How to Choose the Best Anniversary Flowers

Any marriage anniversary is a momentous occasion. You want to find the perfect gift every year to mark the plentiful milestones of your relationship together, so say, “Happy anniversary” with flowers. When you order anniversary flowers, consider:

  • The type: We’ll suggest specific anniversary flowers based on the years of marriage you and your spouse are celebrating, but remember that you can always choose your partner’s favorite blooms or mix floral varieties with personal meaning in mind.
  • The color: Every anniversary has an associated color or two, and some flowers fit those associations. Other blooms only come in a couple of shades, so incorporate the color in different ways. You can always choose your partner’s favorite color over meaning and symbolism, especially if you want to give a personalized gift of anniversary flowers.
  • The number: Roses have specific connotations depending on the number of flowers you have in a bouquet. For other flowers, you can choose a number based on what makes the most impressive bouquet or one for every year of your marriage for a sentimental touch.

Rose connotations

  • The vase and accents: Don’t forget to choose a stunning vase to go with your arrangement so your spouse can happily display the anniversary flowers you lovingly selected. Because many anniversary milestones have a traditional material, you can sometimes choose a vase in that material to reflect the year.

With those tips in mind, you’ll feel more comfortable as you order anniversary flowers. Consult the list below to discover the traditional anniversary flowers by year.

First Wedding Anniversary Flowers

You and your spouse are approaching the one year anniversary of the day you started your lives together. This anniversary marks the end of the first year of growing together and adjusting to your new life. Choose a bouquet that features one of these flowers for a lovely first-anniversary gift:

  • An orange blossom: Delicate and fragrant, the orange blossom is a simple and sweet white bloom. It has associations with good luck and innocence, perfect for reflecting the purity at the beginning of a relationship while wishing good things for the future.
  • A pansy: While this flower is small and delicate, it represents the strong foundation you’ve built within the first year of your marriage that allows your love and the flower to grow.

First anniversary flowers

Gold and yellow are colors associated with the first wedding anniversary, so try to choose flowers that reflect those warm shades. Yellow is an optimistic color that represents how hopeful you are for you and your spouse’s future, celebrating your first anniversary with cheerful flowers.

If you choose a flower other than an orange blossom or pansy, carefully consider your choice. Yellow roses, for instance, are bright and beautiful, but they have more associations with friendship than romantic love, meaning it’s not the best choice for first wedding anniversary flowers. You can also choose an arrangement of dendrobium, a variety of orchid that has white blossoms that are somewhat similar to an orange blossom but with more texture.

Because the first wedding anniversary gift is paper, attach a lovely note to your floral gift expressing your love and excitement for what the future holds.

Second Anniversary Flowers

To celebrate your second anniversary, give your significant other the gift of cosmos. These flowers come in an array of colors that are all cheery, sweet, and romantic, like pink, orange, yellow, white, and red. Cosmos have a daisy-like look with oval petals and a yellow cluster in the center that gives the blossom a pop of optimistic color.

Second anniversary flowers

Choose cosmos in a red or maroon color to evoke the passion and romance you and your partner have for each other. Red is the color of the second anniversary thanks to its warm and fiery feel that reflects intense love. By the second year of marriage, you and your spouse could still be in the honeymoon phase as your love is still new and intense. Red cosmos combine that feeling and the sweet innocence of a young relationship.

Tie a cotton bow around the bouquet or the vase to help evoke the material of the second anniversary. Cotton represents the comfort you’ve developed around each other, along with the durability of your relationship. When paired with red flowers or cosmos in every color, you show how strong your bond has become while still maintaining all the love and passion you felt on day one.

Flowers for Third Wedding Anniversary

Third anniversary flowers

Your love is still going strong as you reach your third anniversary. You’re becoming more comfortable and establishing your life together, and to reflect that with a token of your love, choose fuchsia. These flowers evoke confidence and trust, which you have developed for each other over the three years of your marriage.

These flowers are known as “earrings of the Queen” or “lady’s ear drops” for the way they gracefully hang from their stems. Fuschia generally has some more open petals in one color, like light pink or the vibrant color named after this flower, and a bell shape of petals in a different color, like white, purple, cream, and others.

The material for the third anniversary is leather to symbolize warmth, strength, and flexibility that your relationship has gained over time. You might be able to find leather accents for a flower vase, but you can always incorporate the more modern crystal into your third-anniversary gift. That modern style will go better with the whimsical look of fuschia flowers.

Fourth Anniversary Flower Arrangements

Your relationship is blossoming as you approach the fourth year of marriage, so a bouquet of wedding anniversary flowers is more than fitting. For a floral gift that your spouse may have never received before, consider geraniums.

Geraniums for anniversary flowers

Colors of romance characterize geraniums, with pink, purple, red, and fuchsia colors. Sometimes, geraniums feature white or dark accents and often come in stems that look like a cluster of smaller flowers.

A geranium also represents the unexpected that comes through with fantastic color and texture. That unexpected appearance mirrors the future that you and your spouse will dive into as the years pass. It’s also a unique flower that helps commemorate an anniversary that couples may not celebrate as much as others.

With linen or silk representing the fourth wedding anniversary, you can add a fabric accent around the vase or just keep it simple. Choose a vase with blue or green colors in it to go with the natural beauty of geraniums and the traditional colors of the fourth wedding anniversary.

Flowers for Fifth Wedding Anniversary

Daisies are a beautiful choice for the fifth wedding anniversary. Sweet and innocent daisies reflect the foundation of love you and your significant other have built together, though your love is still somewhat new. The flower’s center represents the foundation you have built together where your love will continue to grow in the future.

The most common color for daisies is white, as that reflects ideas of innocence, but you can find daisies in a rainbow of other shades. If you’d like to go by the colors of this milestone, select flowers for your fifth wedding anniversary in these shades:

  • Blue
  • Turquoise
  • Pink

If you prefer the look of white daisies, the flowers will still reflect your fifth wedding anniversary, but you can also make them an even more classic gift. To tie in the traditional gift of the fifth wedding anniversary, choose a wood vase to represent the strength of the relationship you and your spouse have built over five years.

10-Year Anniversary Flower

10 year anniversary flowers

The 10th-anniversary milestone is something special worth celebrating. You have been together for a decade, building your life and experiencing new things together. For an impressive gift, choose gorgeous daffodils that:

  • Are cheerful, yellow blooms that reflect the joy of the past and optimism for the future
  • Feature a textured, trumpet shape that proclaims your love
  • Create a unique floral gift that’s sure to impress

Silver and blue are associated with the 10th wedding anniversary, but daffodils commonly come in yellow, white, orange, and other warm shades. To bring in the silver or blue shades, choose a vase and accent that feature those contrasting colors to the warmth of this 10-year anniversary flower.

15th Wedding Anniversary Flower

If you’ve been waiting to gift the classic, romantic rose on its corresponding anniversary, the 15th year is it. By this anniversary, your love has grown for each other over years of commitment, and it deserves an impressive floral arrangement. A rose bouquet is classic and elegant, perfect to represent how your love has grown over the years.

Choose a red rose bouquet to symbolize true love and passion. You can also choose forever roses that last for a couple of anniversaries after the 15th anniversary. Remember that the number of roses in anniversary flower arrangements has various meanings, so consider:

  • One rose is a simple way to show your love. It’s perfect for couples who want to celebrate without exchanging extravagant gifts.
  • A dozen roses are classic and timeless. It will always represent true love in a grander gesture than one rose but is something a bit more subtle than large arrangements.
  • Two dozen roses double the romantic gift. This gift is unique compared to a dozen roses and emphasizes how you feel about your spouse, even after a decade and a half together.
  • Three dozen roses are extravagant, but the 15 years you and your spouse spent together are worth every impressive petal.

The symbolic material for the 15th wedding anniversary is crystal, giving you the perfect accompaniment to a bouquet of roses. Roses in a crystal vase will evoke beauty, tradition, and romance all in one gift. The vase is already a popular gift for the 15th anniversary, so including an arrangement of stunning roses elevates the token of your love.

20th Wedding Anniversary Flower

After 20 years of marriage, you and your spouse have adjusted to your life together and settled into happiness. The daylily is another cheerful flower that represents a carefree nature. At this point, you’re comfortable with each other, and that stability has eased you into a carefree life. Celebrate how far you’ve come with daylilies, which come in a wide variety of shades, such as:

  • Yellow
  • Red
  • Pink
  • Cream
  • Purple

The 20th-anniversary flower features one color in the center and another on the outer halves of the petals — such as a sunburst of yellow in the middle and red on the edges. Some also have a stripe pattern that creates a blossom as bold as the love that you’ve achieved with two decades of marriage.

Not sure which color will make the best 20th-anniversary flower? Choose cream or white daylilies to fit tradition. Create a unique display using vintage china drinkware as a vase to fit the traditional material into your gift.

25th-Anniversary Flower

After a quarter of a century together full of growth, happiness, and wonderful shared experiences, you need to celebrate with an equally impressive flower. Iris has the feel of royalty with its often purple shade, reflecting the remarkable milestone of your 25th wedding anniversary. It also symbolizes:

  • Admiration
  • Faith
  • Hope
  • Wisdom

Iris flowers for your anniversary flowers

In the past, the gift of irises was a token of deep appreciation, love, and sentiment. Choose specific colors to convey something in particular, like purple to evoke royalty, white for purity, or blue for hope. Whether you want to treat your spouse like royalty, convey how pure your love is, or express the hope you have for your future together, irises will send the right message.

With a quarter of a century of marriage between you, symbolic silver evokes the radiance of your love, so choose a vase that incorporates the radiant material or color.

Flowers for the 30th Anniversary

Lilies and sweet peas serve as 30th-anniversary flowers. Sweet pea symbolizes the lasting pleasure that you’ve achieved so far in your marriage and comes in soft, romantic shades of:

  • Pink
  • White
  • Purple
  • Blue

The shades of sweet pea flowers may appear in dual tones to create a remarkable bouquet that happily celebrates your 30th anniversary. Lilies also make perfect 30th-anniversary flowers because they symbolize devotion and come in a wide array of beautiful colors.

Because the color of the 30th anniversary is green, be sure to incorporate some filler into your bouquet of sweet pea or lily for that natural touch that represents how natural your life together has become.

40th-Anniversary Flower

Nasturtium fortieth anniversary flowers

You may not be as familiar with the 40th-anniversary flower, known as nasturtium. Nasturtium reflects victory, and with four decades of marriage, you have reason to feel triumphant. Select these flowers and offer a token with these qualities:

  • Rich, warm colors to reflect the warmth of your love.
  • A few small, rounded petals create a sweet appearance.
  • The leaves are large and rounded to contrast the small blossoms.

These delicate flowers look great spilling over the sides of a hanging basket, but they can also add a warm touch to flower arrangements. The large, textured blossoms of peonies contrast well with the delicate flowers for a vibrant bouquet. Display the arrangement in a ruby red vase to tie in the material and color of this anniversary.

Flower of the 50th Anniversary

The 50th wedding anniversary is an incredible milestone. With half a century together, you and your spouse want to celebrate with an arrangement of the best flowers for an anniversary. While a large bouquet of roses would be a classic gift, try something just as beautiful but a bit different with violets. Violets are gorgeous flowers than convey:

  • Affection
  • Faithfulness
  • Innocence
  • Understated beauty

These flowers look somewhat like pansies, bringing your anniversary flowers full circle to the first year. Pansies are a bit larger than violets, so the 50th-anniversary flower is a bit more delicate, which you can contrast with the bold material of this anniversary.

As the most well-known of the anniversary symbols, gold represents half a century of love. The warm color complements the purple shade often found in violets and gives it even more of a royal feel. Don’t be afraid to consider grand anniversary flower arrangements when deciding on a 50th-anniversary flower gift. Half a century of marriage deserves something big to celebrate, after all.

Celebrate Your Long-Lasting Love With Anniversary Flowers From Ode á la Rose

Celebrate your anniversary with flowers

Now that you know what to include in years of anniversary flower arrangements, find the perfect bouquet with help from Ode á la Rose. We offer same and next day delivery throughout areas in the Northeast and Midwest, bringing a breathtaking arrangement to your spouse in our signature gift box that keeps your anniversary flowers safe.

Order anniversary flowers today and find bouquets for every occasion in between. Celebrate every year your love blooms with elegant flowers and artful arrangements from Ode á la Rose.