First Wedding Anniversary Gifts

The first anniversary is paper, and most paper gifts have a short life to them. A card gets read and put on the mantelpiece for a fortnight, a book goes on a shelf, tickets get used and end up in a drawer with the passports. A photographic print is a paper gift that goes up on the wall and stays there for the rest of the marriage, which is a rather different proposition for the same tradition.

Not any picture, though. A photograph of a place that means something to the two of you: the headland where one of you proposed, the county you married in, the coast you spent the honeymoon on. I photograph the Irish landscape for a living, and my advice is always to start with the place first and the picture second. You already know the place, and that's the one advantage you have over anybody scrolling through generic wall art looking for something that goes with the couch.

Lough Leane mirror-still beneath the Killarney mountains, Co. Kerry, by Peter Cox
Lough Leane on a still September afternoon, Killarney, Co. Kerry

A paper gift in the fullest sense

If you want to honour the paper tradition properly, this is paper through and through. Every print is made on Canson Platine Fibre Rag, an archival 100% cotton rag paper with a semi-gloss finish that holds deep blacks and keeps colour rich, and it's made to outlast the pair of you. I sign each one by hand in pencil, which is about as paper as a gift gets.

The modern list, for what it's worth, says a clock for the first anniversary, and I've nothing at all for you on that front.

Start with your place

A year in, the two of you have already got a few places between you. The spot where the proposal happened, wherever the wedding was, the road you drove on the honeymoon, the beach you keep going back to on a free Saturday. The three photographs on this page are the kind of thing I mean: the lakes of Killarney by day and by moonlight, and Barley Cove out in West Cork.

Yours might be none of those, which is fine - the collection is arranged by county, so you can go straight to Kerry, or Cork, or whichever county you're thinking of, through the Ireland by County page. And if you married here but live somewhere else now, prints ship worldwide. A photograph of the place tends to matter more when you can't simply drive out and stand in it.

Moonrise under a starry sky at Ladies' View, Killarney, Co. Kerry, by Peter Cox
Moonrise at Ladies' View on a September night, Killarney, Co. Kerry

If you'd rather choose together

Picking a photograph for your husband or wife is a lovely thing to do, but it's a judgement call all the same, and plenty of people would rather not make it on their own. A gift card hands the choosing back to the pair of you, so you settle on the photograph, the size, and the format together. Spending an anniversary evening choosing something for the walls of your own house isn't a bad way to mark the year.

Barley Cove beach and turquoise water from the air, West Cork, by Peter Cox
Barley Cove in October sunshine, West Cork

The practical bits

Everything is made once you order it, so allow two to three weeks from ordering to it arriving with you, which is worth bearing in mind if you're working towards a particular date. Every photograph can be made as a framed print, on canvas, or as an acrylic print. Which one suits is entirely down to the room it's going into and your own taste.

Before anything ships, I check it against my specifications, and if a piece is damaged on its travels I'll replace it at no cost. If you're torn between two photographs of the same place, or unsure about size, get in touch through the contact page and I'll talk it through with you.

More gift ideas and wall art: Wedding Gifts · Retirement Gifts · New Home & Housewarming Gifts · Irish Wall Art · Canvas Prints of Ireland · Acrylic Prints of Ireland · Framed Prints of Ireland

Cheers,
Peter