Milestone Wedding Anniversaries: Celebrating Silver, Ruby and Golden Years in North Wales
Every year together counts. Some years deserve a ceremony under a glowing sunset.
Short summer reads…
Ten years, twenty five, forty, fifty. Milestone wedding anniversaries have a way of sneaking up on you. One minute you're unpacking wedding presents, the next someone at a family dinner is asking what you're planning for your silver. Hi, I'm Leon, an accredited celebrant and photographer based in Llandudno, and I'd love to help you mark yours properly.
In this read, I'll go through the traditional milestone names, a few ways to celebrate them, and what a milestone ceremony with Twilight Ceremonies looks like.
The Traditional Milestone Names
In the UK, each anniversary has a traditional material or gemstone attached to it, and a few stand out as the big milestones:
10 years: tin
25 years: silver
30 years: pearl
40 years: ruby
50 years: golden
60 years: diamond
They're a lovely starting point for gifts, colours or themes. But a milestone doesn't have to be a round number. Twilight Ceremonies milestone ceremonies are about recognising achievements and life events that bring you happiness, so your milestone might be a first home, surviving a difficult year together, or simply realising how far you've come.
Why a Ceremony, Not Just a Dinner
A meal out is lovely, and you should absolutely have one. But milestone anniversaries carry more weight than a normal year, and a ceremony gives that weight a place to land. It's a moment to stop, look back at what you've built together and say it out loud.
That's why I created Twilight Ceremonies. I didn't want it to all finish after the elopements. Wedding anniversaries can often become overlooked as life gets that much busier, and the big ones deserve far more than a card on the kitchen table.
It doesn't need to be formal or serious, either. A milestone ceremony can be full of laughter, with stories that only make sense to the two of you.
What a Milestone Ceremony Includes
A milestone ceremony starts at £450. It includes a personalised sunset ceremony at a location of your choosing, with ten Polaroid photographs as a keepsake. If you'd like a little more, there are optional extras for £50 each: a video and audio recording of your ceremony, twenty digital candid photographs before and after the ceremony, and drone coverage where the location allows it.
Every ceremony script is written from scratch around your story. For a milestone, that often means looking back. The year you met, the places you've lived, the children or adventures that arrived along the way, and the moments that made you who you are as a couple. You can see every package side by side on my anniversary offerings page.
Ideas to Make Your Milestone Personal
Your milestone theme can be as subtle or as bold as you like. A few ideas couples love:
Bring the traditional material into the day, like a silver ribbon on a picnic hamper for a silver anniversary, or deep red flowers for a ruby. Return to the type of landscape you married in, whether that was a beach, a mountain or a quiet countryside spot. Write a few words to each other, looking back over the years, and read them during the ceremony. Or, if you'd like to make new promises for the decades ahead, my guide on how to plan a vow renewal in North Wales explains how a renewal of vows differs from a milestone ceremony.
Choosing a Place With Meaning
For a milestone, I'd suggest choosing somewhere with a little meaning as well as a lovely view. Perhaps the beach where you spent your honeymoon, a headland you've walked every summer, or a lake you've always talked about visiting. Favourites of mine include Penmon Lighthouse, South Stack and Trearddur Bay on Anglesey, and the Great Orme above Llandudno.
Comfort matters too, especially for golden and diamond years. Not every beautiful spot involves a scramble down a cliff path. There are plenty of places in North Wales where you can park nearby and take a short, gentle walk to the view, and I'm always happy to talk through what will feel comfortable for you.
Planning in the Months Before Summer
Twilight Ceremonies is exclusively for the summer months, and the planning is deliberately relaxed. We work together through the months leading up to summer to craft your sunset ceremony. You can tune in and out to complete your ceremony script, knowing there's plenty of time and no rush. It fits around your life, not the other way round. You don't need to write anything yourselves unless you'd like to. I'll ask about the years you've shared, and the script grows from those conversations.
If you'd like to know who you'll be working with, you can read my story and why I created Twilight Ceremonies. I'm now accepting bookings for summer 2027.
Keeping the Memories Going
A milestone ceremony doesn't end when the sun goes down. Your Polaroids are handed to you warm to the touch that same evening, and your photos join your Love Story Album, so the anniversary sits alongside every other chapter of your story. And through the Love Story Registry at Leon Bagnall Experiences, your anniversary can be marked with a commemorative letter, imagery from your album and wild flowers. So the next milestone won't sneak up on you quite so easily.
Here's to every year behind you, and every summer still ahead.