1st Anniversary Gift Ideas for Your Wife

Your first anniversary is the first time you get to celebrate the marriage instead of the wedding. The best 1st anniversary gifts for a wife show her what the first year meant to you: the first home, the new routines, the small ways you learned to live side by side. Here are 12 ideas across every budget. Our top pick is a song about your first year married, because it gives her that year in a form she can play back whenever she wants.

Hear one Songbond song

This one was made for someone else. Yours would carry her name and your stories.

12 first anniversary gift ideas for your wife

1. A song about your first year married ($39.90). Share the wedding, the first home and the moments from this year you want her to remember, and Songbond turns it into an original song. You can ask for changes until it feels right.
2. Stationery with her name on it. Paper is the traditional first gift. A set of good cards and envelopes printed with her name or monogram. Usually $30 to $80.
3. A book of letters from your wedding guests. Email fifteen guests and ask each for one memory of the day. Print and bind the replies. Usually under $40.
4. A drawing from your favorite wedding photo. An illustrator turns the photo into a pencil or ink sketch. Usually $60 to $150.
5. The birthstone of your wedding month. Small earrings or a pendant in the stone of the month you married. Usually $60 to $250.
6. A rose bush that matches her bouquet. Find the rose variety from her wedding bouquet, or the closest flower you can grow, and plant it where she can see it from the kitchen. Usually $30 to $70.
7. A notebook of your first-year recipes. Write out the meals you learned to cook together this year, with notes on who burned what. A good notebook costs about $20.
8. A robe with the date stitched inside. Something soft for Sunday mornings, with your wedding date on the inside hem. Usually $50 to $120.
9. A Saturday with nothing on her list. Take the errands, the dog, the laundry and dinner. Hand her the whole day, and mean it.
10. Four letters by post. Mail her a real letter every week for a month. Paper, stamps and your handwriting, for under $10.
11. The start of a yearly photo. Take a photo of the two of you in the same spot on your anniversary, frame it, and leave room in the frame for the years to come. Usually $20 to $40 for a multi-photo frame.
12. A digital frame full of guest photos. Load it with every photo guests shared from the wedding and your first year. Usually $60 to $150.

How to choose for your wife

Look at what her first year of marriage asked of her. If it was a busy, heavy year, a gift of rest lands best. If it was a joyful one, something that holds on to the memories fits.

• If she is sentimental: the guest letters, the drawing or the song.
• If she is stretched thin: the free Saturday or the robe.
• If she loves her home and garden: the rose bush or the yearly photo.

Five questions to ask yourself before you buy

Before you order anything, sit down for ten minutes with these. What did she carry this year that nobody saw? What made her laugh hardest? What did she give up or change to build this home with you? What is one thing she says that you would miss if you never heard it again? What do you want the next year to feel like? Your answers will point you to the right gift, and they make the best card you will ever write. If you are ordering a song, share them when you order.

Make her first anniversary song

Create a first anniversary song for your wife. It is ready within 24 hours, and express delivery gets it to you in about an hour.

Also in the Journal: first anniversary songs and an anniversary song for your wife.