What to Say in an Anniversary Video Message (Even If You Only Know One of Them)

An anniversary message has a trap in it that a birthday message does not. The occasion sounds like it wants wisdom about marriage, so that is what people reach for, and it is the one thing the couple is least short of. They have been doing this for decades. What they do not have is a record of how it looked from outside.

That is the job. You are a witness, not an advisor.

Three shapes that work

• The observation: “The thing I have always noticed about you two is…” Whatever you have seen them do a hundred times.
• The moment: “I remember watching you at…” One scene where they were being themselves together.
• The effect: “Being around you two taught me…” What their marriage showed you, rather than what you would advise about yours.

If you only know one of them

This is most people, and it makes a better clip than knowing both. Talk to the one you know about the one you do not: “I knew her before you, and I have never seen her like she is with you.” Said to camera, that lands harder than anything a mutual friend can offer, because only you can say it.

If they are your parents

Children of the couple carry the clips everyone else rewatches, and stall longest, because the whole relationship feels too big for thirty seconds. Do not summarise it. Take one specific, slightly ordinary thing you grew up watching: how they argued about the route, who made the tea, the thing they always said to each other in the hall. The small domestic detail is the marriage, and it is the part your siblings will not have picked.

If it is a milestone

At a 30th, a 40th, a 50th, the number pulls everyone toward the same retrospective and you end up with twenty clips covering the same decades. Take one year, or one chapter nobody else was there for, and let the person compiling it build the arc.

Skip these

• Marriage advice, from any direction, including the joking kind.
• “How have you put up with him for forty years”, and every variant.
• Anything about how rare long marriages are now: it reads as a comment on other people, not a compliment to them.
• Apologising for not being there, if you are not there. Say the warm thing instead.

Length and tone

Thirty seconds to a minute, one take. If you get emotional, keep going and send it: that clip is the one that gets rewatched. Whoever set the collection up chose a time limit and the recorder stops at it, so lead with the thing you most want them to hear.