© Janek Skarzynski, AFP/FileA couple wearing presidential medals they received for having survived at least 50 years of marriage take part in a ceremony in their honour in Warsaw on February 5, 2014.
Grey-haired and grinning, two dozen couples hold champagne flutes at a Warsaw ceremony in their honour. They survived 50 years of marriage and in Poland, that is reason enough for a presidential medal.
"To qualify, you have to put in over 18,000 solid days of work. Other medals require less, so it really is a considerable feat to have spent the last half century together," Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz says at this month's event.
The lucky-in-loves take turns walking down the red carpet to accept their medals -- silver-plated with intertwined roses at the centre and a pink ribbon -- while family members cheer and play paparazzi at the back of the room at the so-called Wedding Palace.
The tradition is regularly played out in cities across the heavily Catholic country, with a hefty average of 65,000 medals awarded each year according to the president's office.
True, marital milestones are also recognised elsewhere. In the United States, a golden anniversary will get you a greeting from the White House, while Britain sets the bar a notch higher: couples have to make it through six decades without splitting for a message from the queen. She herself qualified seven years ago.
Yet no other country honours marathon marriages with a presidential medal, something more often associated with military feats for example.
"It's really quite unusual. I haven't found any other (medal) that's specifically for sustaining a marriage," says Megan Robertson, a 54-year-old computer programmer who runs the website "Medals of the World".
"Although, many countries have awards for raising large numbers of children -- something popular in Communist countries," adds the Briton who has herself been married for nearly 30 years.
Socialist-era Romania for example had "what they called the Order of Mother Hero, which I think she was, because you had to have 10 children to get it. That sounds pretty heroic to me."
Robertson says medals offer an indication of what a country finds important, whether it be a particular profession or trade or churning out enough children to fill factories and armies.
Comment: It appears that the Russian craftsmen didn't just embed shards of Chelyabinsk meteorite into the medals... they first polished and cut the shards, then added lithographic engravings.
Chinese organizers of the 2008 Summer Games must have thought they'd set an impossible standard when they achieved a first by presenting medals inlaid with jade...
2008 Olympic Games Medals 'Gold inlaid with Jade' to be processed by June But they've been outdone by the Russians!