An anniversary gift that is not an object
By the fifth or tenth anniversary, most couples have run through the obvious presents. The traditional lists, paper for the first year, wood for the fifth, tin for the tenth, help, but they still point toward objects, and many people would rather mark the day than add to the shelves.
A sunrise is a different kind of anniversary gift. It happens once on that date, at the place where you married, at a time that can be calculated to the minute. It has no size or colour to get wrong, and it repeats every year without anyone having to remember to order it.
Which sunrise
The anniversary sunrise is simply the sunrise at the wedding place on the next anniversary date. If you married in Florence on 14 June, it is the sunrise over that point in Florence on the coming 14 June, local time. For a wedding that took place at a different time of day, the sunrise still belongs to the date: it is the first light of your anniversary there.
Times change a little from year to year for the same date, by a minute or so, because the calendar year is not exactly the length of the Earth’s orbit. The leap-year cycle corrects the drift every four years.
Weddings on 29 February
Couples who married on a leap day have a real question to answer every three years out of four. Resthe uses a fixed, published rule: in common years, the anniversary of 29 February is taken as 28 February. The certificate shows the date used, so nobody has to argue about it.
The number on the certificate
Each anniversary sunrise carries its ordinal: the 1st, the 10th, the 25th anniversary. It is recorded with the names, the place and the exact local time. If you prefer to count the mornings rather than the years, The Nth Sunrise counts every sunrise at your place since the day you met, exactly, and dedicates the next one with its number, the 3,653rd, for example.
Where the place is not where you live
Many couples married somewhere they no longer live: a hometown, a family house, a beach abroad. The sunrise there still happens on your anniversary. The gift page gives you the exact local time and, if you like, the time in your own city, so you can be awake for it from far away.
Why a sunrise suits an anniversary
Anniversaries are about repetition: the same date coming round again, a year further on. A sunrise has the same rhythm. It happens on your anniversary every year, at nearly the same time, over the same place, whether or not anyone marks it. Dedicating one gives that repetition a record: the 10th anniversary sunrise, with its exact minute and its number, written down.
It also scales. A first anniversary sunrise is a small gift; a 25th or a 40th, framed and hung, carries the weight of all the years in between. Couples sometimes add one each year, a row of certificates that become their own quiet timeline.
Sunrise time over the years
For the same place and date, the sunrise time moves by up to a minute or so from year to year and comes back every four years, following the leap-year cycle. Over decades there is also a slow drift caused by the calendar and the Earth’s orbit, but it is too small to matter within a lifetime. The 1st and the 25th anniversary sunrise over the same church will be within a minute or two of each other. What changes is everything around it, which is rather the point of an anniversary.
Giving it on the day
Because the gift page exists from the moment of payment, with the place, the time and a countdown to the sunrise, it can be given before the anniversary itself: at dinner the evening before, or in a card on the morning. Some couples set an alarm and watch the sunrise together if they are near the place; others simply note the time and raise a cup of coffee to it. The certificate, also a premium poster, is ready from the start, to print for the wall.
Anniversaries that are not weddings
Couples who never married, or who mark a different date, still have anniversaries: the day they met, moved in together or adopted a child. The anniversary sunrise works from any of these dates, as long as you pin the place that goes with it. For a count of every morning since the day you met, rather than one sunrise a year, the sunrise count described above is the better fit.
Practical points
- Choose the point carefully. The place is fixed after payment, so pin the church, the town hall, the garden, wherever it actually happened.
- The date is fixed too. The moment is calculated from the wedding date you enter. Names, the message and the privacy setting can be corrected until the sunrise happens.
- Polar latitudes. A wedding inside the Arctic Circle may have its anniversary in polar night or midnight sun. The site shows before payment whether a sunrise exists on that date.
The certificate comes as a premium poster in A4, A3, US Letter or 11×14, designed to be framed. Anniversary Sunrise is calculated from the wedding place and date you enter.