Questions to ask your parents on their wedding anniversary: how they met, the day itself and the years after

Short answer: Ask both partners about how they met, the wedding day, their first home and the years that tested them, and let them correct each other. Pick five or six questions, ask them at a quiet moment of the celebration, and record the answers on your phone with their permission.

Last updated: 3 November 2026.

A 25th, 40th or 50th wedding anniversary is often the only time the whole family and the couple's old friends are in one room. Everyone knows a few lines of the story: the dance where they met, the borrowed car, the first flat above a shop. Few people know the whole of it, and the two people who do will not always be there to tell it.

The questions below are for both partners, and for anyone who wants to ask them: children, grandchildren and friends of the couple. They go from the first meeting to the wedding day and the years after, and they leave room for the hard parts without pushing.

How to ask

• Bring the wedding photo. Put it on the table and ask who is in it. Names, dresses and the weather come back faster with a photo.
• Ask both, and let them correct each other. Two versions of the same story are better than one, and the disagreements are often the funniest part.
• Choose a quiet moment. Before the guests arrive or the morning after works better than during the speeches.
• Leave the hard years to them. Ask what helped them through difficult times, not what went wrong. They decide how much to say.
• Ask for one detail. After each answer, ask what it looked like, what they wore or what someone said.

How you met

1. Where and how did you meet for the first time?
2. What was the first thing you noticed about each other?
3. Who made the first move, and how?
4. What was your first date, and how did it go?
5. What did your parents think of the other one at first?
6. When did you know this was serious?
7. What did you do on an ordinary evening out back then, and what did it cost?

The proposal and the wedding day

1. How did the proposal happen, and who asked whom?
2. Where did you get married, and who was there?
3. What did you wear, and who chose it?
4. What was the weather like, and what went wrong on the day?
5. What did you eat, and was there dancing? What was the first song?
6. Who gave a speech, and do you remember anything that was said?
7. Where did you go after the wedding, and was there a honeymoon?

The first years

1. Where was your first home together, and what did it look like?
2. What did you have, and what did you have to do without?
3. What was your first big argument about?
4. What was it like when your first child was born?
5. Which friends from those years are still in your life?
6. What did you do on Sundays in those first years?

The years after

1. Which year together was the hardest, and what helped you through it?
2. Which year was the best, and why?
3. Which move, job or decision changed your life together the most?
4. What do you still do together that you did at the start?
5. Which trip together do you remember best?
6. What did you learn about each other only after many years?

Looking back, for both of you

1. What do you admire most in the other one?
2. What makes you laugh about each other, even now?
3. What would you tell your younger selves on the wedding day?
4. What do you hope your children and grandchildren take from your marriage?
5. If you could relive one day together, which would it be?
6. What would you like to do together in the years ahead?

Recording and keeping the answers

• Ask first. Say why you would like to record: so the stories are not lost, and so others can hear them later. If someone prefers not to be recorded, write down a few words afterwards instead.
• Use the voice recorder on your phone and put the phone on the table, not in your hand. After a few minutes people forget it is there. A voice says more than a perfect transcript.
• Write down the basics the same day: who answered, the date, the place and the names that came up. Without names and a date, a recording is hard to place ten years from now.
• Photograph the photos and objects that were passed around, and keep them with the recording.
• Keep two copies in two places, and send them to the people who were there.

A place for the answers

If you want one place for the answers, The Memory Palace is made for this: your own 3D palace with rooms you walk through, where photos, voice recordings, videos and written stories hang side by side. You can make a room for their wedding and the years after, write the questions and answers in it as stories, and hang the recordings next to the photos they are about. With a collect link, relatives or friends can add a photo, a memory or a voice recording from their browser, without an account. With the weekly question, a parent can also get one question a week by email, after saying yes, and answer by pressing a button and talking. A palace is private by default and you choose who gets in. It is made by a small team in Leuven, and you can start one for free.

Questions for other occasions

• St Nicholas and Sinterklaas
• Christmas dinner with grandparents
• New Year's Eve with friends
• A 70th, 80th or 90th birthday
• Mother's Day
• Father's Day
• A funeral or condolence visit
• Grandparents meeting the new baby
• A school or class reunion
• A road trip or holiday with old friends
• A retirement farewell

Read on: keeping wedding memories beyond the photo album, questions for a 70th, 80th or 90th birthday, how to interview older family members, a gift for parents who want nothing, the free printable sheet of twenty questions to ask your parents.