By Pash, founder of Adorely · Updated 8 September 2026 · 5 min read
Start with the thing only you saw. Not that they are your inspiration, which every caption says, but the specific evening you watched one of them wait up, or handle something badly and then fix it, or go quiet and carry on. That is the sentence they will read twice, and it is the one nobody else can write.
The second thing worth knowing is that the public post and the private message are two different jobs. A collage with a caption is for everybody else and there is nothing wrong with it. What gets kept is the one you send only to them. Below are lines for both, in Hindi and English, plus the question worth asking while they can still answer it.
A story tagging them reaches four hundred people and reaches your parents as a notification. Send something to the family group or to each of them directly as well. It takes a minute, it is the version they will screenshot, and in most families it is the only message of the day that is actually addressed to them rather than performed near them.
Short beats poetic. Each of these names something real rather than praising them in general, which is what makes it sound like you and not like a forwarded message.
Written for a family that speaks Hindi at home. If your parents read Devanagari, send it in Devanagari rather than transliterated, and check the spelling with somebody before it goes on anything printed.
Twenty nine sounds like nothing and means everything, and most anniversary messages avoid the number entirely. Naming it does the work: it makes the message about their specific marriage rather than about marriage. It also quietly tells them you know, which after a certain number of years is most of the point.
Anything comparing them to a couple from a film, anything about being made for each other, and anything that reads like a caption looking for likes. Also avoid promising them grandchildren as a joke, which lands very differently on parents who are waiting for them than it does on the person typing it.
One message from each child, plus the ones from their brothers and sisters and the friends who were at the wedding, is a completely different object from a single caption. It also solves the problem of everybody posting separately at the same time and none of it reaching them properly.
Collect everyone in one place →Most Indian children have a compressed version of this and have never heard it straight through: who introduced them, what they each thought, what the families said, what the first year was really like. Record twenty minutes of it on a phone this year. It is the only anniversary gift that gets harder to obtain every year you leave it.
An anniversary in a year with a death in the family is a complicated day, and the loud version of it can be unkind. Mark it quietly and directly: sit with them, say the number, say one thing you are grateful for. Do not post. They will remember the year somebody understood that.
The date still arrives and it does not stop being their anniversary. Writing to the parent who is still here, about the marriage rather than about the loss, is almost always welcome and almost never done. Say what you saw between them. That is the thing nobody else can give them now.
Wishes land better attached to an evening. Book the restaurant they like rather than the one that is impressive, or cook the thing they cooked in the years when there was less money. In most families the message is the part they keep and the evening is the part that makes them believe it.
Start with something only you saw rather than something general. A specific evening, a habit they still have, a way one of them handled a hard year. Name the number of years too. Anything that could be sent to any couple reads as forwarded, and that is what most anniversary captions sound like.
शादी की सालगिरह मुबारक हो, मम्मी पापा। आप दोनों की जोड़ी सलामत रहे। If your parents read Devanagari, send it in Devanagari rather than transliterated, and have the spelling checked before it goes on anything printed.
Post if you want to, and send something privately as well. A story tagging them reaches four hundred people and reaches your parents as a notification. The message sent only to them is the one that gets screenshotted and kept, and in most families it is the only one actually addressed to them.
The date still arrives and it is still their anniversary. Write to the parent who is here about the marriage rather than about the loss, and say what you actually saw between them. It is almost always welcome and almost never done, because most people avoid the day entirely.
Photos, your words, their song, and wishes from everyone, on one beautiful page, shared with one link.
Make a birthday page (free)
