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Having only been married for 4 months now, and being the consummate planner, I can only imagine what type of anniversary gifts I should be getting for my beautiful bride. I could go the obvious route and get her roses. Then again, I did that already for our wedding.

What should I get my wife for our anniversary? A free calendar from work contained a list of anniversary gifts, listed by the length of the marriage. According to the calendar's list, the traditional gift was paper, while the more recent gift indicated was clocks. Since I am something of a traditionalist, does that mean I should get a paper clock for my wife?

Facing the next anniversary is puzzling. What to give next? Should it be dishes or cotton or something leather? Avoid asking a florist, because it's predictable that they will suggest a huge bunch of roses that wholesales for mere pennies but will be cheerfully sold to you for $150 or worse.

Lists of traditional anniversary gifts usually skip from the fifteenth anniversary to the twentieth. But what do you do in between? I fear that most people, after having been together for seventeen or eighteen years, have let their sizzle fizzle and resort to giving each other appliances and other "practical" household items as gifts.

There are pluses and minuses to the dreaded "practical gift." Expensive jewelry is more likely to get a romantic response from your wife than a pragmatic case of light bulbs or a dozen replacement mop heads, but at least the practical gifts, as embarrassing as they may be to fancy up with bows and fancy paper, at least say to the wife that you do understand some of the stuff she really needs.

A much more economical choice for an anniversary gift is making a batch of "love coupons." Grab some kind of paper and create coupons good for a massage or household chore to be done by you without grumbling, redeemable any time. While still practical, this homemade gift proves that you put enough though and time in to show that you really care.

With luck, you now have a few ways to treat your sweetheart well. As for myself, while I have any number of things I could get my wife for our anniversary, I know that she loves roses, so that's what she will get.