On Monday I did something I expect I'll only do once in my life.
I sent a Diamond Wedding Anniversary card.
It takes a special couple to reach a Diamond Wedding.
It also takes a healthy couple because being happily married is no guarantee of getting there.
If my East Anglian uncle had lived two days longer he'd have celebrated his, but life's a bastard sometimes.
My Hertfordshire aunt and uncle celebrated theirs yesterday.
The Queen sent a card.
I don't expect to see another one of those either.
You have to ask the Queen to send one, it doesn't arrive automatically. Officially you ask the Centenarian Team at the Department for Work and Pensions and they pass on the information to the Anniversaries Office at Buckingham Palace and they send a card in the post in a special crested envelope.
You can't apply more than five weeks before the day (perhaps for reasons hinted at earlier).
I went over to celebrate the couple's big day.
It was a low key but happy family event.
We had fizzy wine and sushi and cupcakes.
The rain held off.
We looked back at photos of the wedding, some in colour, most in black and white.
Hats for women were very much the expected thing in 1962.
We also read an astonishingly detailed report from the local paper because even minor weddings were big news back then.
In attendance were cousins I hadn't seen in years.
Also present were the offspring of cousins I'd somehow never met even though they were old enough to be submitting their dissertation this week.
We agreed we were a rubbish family at meeting up and really ought to do it more often.
We also noted that no close family had died or got married in the last ten years and maybe that had something to do with it.
It was a Thursday so some members of the family were stuck at work or school and couldn't turn up.
Assuming you get married on a Saturday, diamond anniversaries are always on a Thursday.
One key member of the family couldn't make it because they'd been taken into hospital the day before.
Another key member couldn't make it because they were hanging around that hospital checking what was going on.
All's well, but a trip to Hertfordshire really wasn't on the cards.
That's the thing about once-in-a-lifetime events.
Sometimes one makes you miss another.
We learned how my aunt's been keeping fit since she retired aged 79.
We let my uncle do his 'hilarious' coin trick he's been doing since I was little.
We raised a glass and celebrated the day.
Amazingly, according to official statistics released in 2014, 16% of UK marriages reach the 60th wedding anniversary.
This statistic may no longer be completely correct a decade later.
It's almost certainly not correct for those getting married today.
But it still takes a special couple to reach a Diamond Wedding.
