The traditional gifts associated with various wedding anniversaries are arbitrary and inconsistent. For example, in Britain the 4th anniversary is celebrated with fruit and flowers, while in the US it is silk or linen. And that's just the tradition; according to Wikipedia, the modern gift for the 4th is "appliances." Reading the full list, the modern gifts look like they've been nobbled by commercial interests. Clocks? Desk sets? Fashion jewelry? Pfff.

Mrs. Bell and I follow a different system. Dmitri Mendeleev to the rescue! Since he went to all that work to organize all the elements in a nice ordered Periodic Table, why reinvent the wheel for weddings? Our first anniversary was our Hydoversary (element 1: H, hydrogen), then came our Heliaversary (element 2: He, helium), and so on.

In this system, a big landmark comes when you reach iron (element 26: Fe, iron). This is the first element at which fusion ceases to be energetically advantageous. In other words, after this point, you'd better have gotten the hang of this marriage thing, you won't be able to rely on physics alone to help you stick together.

Mrs. Bell and I had a rather long engagement, which in fact allowed us to celebrate our Electroversary (-1: a free electron) one year before our wedding.

You can't say that we didn't start as we meant to go on.