Married for 50 years? This country gives you a medal

Jadwiga Kurkiewska, 72, and Jerzy Kurkiewski, 78, receive presidential medals from Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz for having survived more than 50 years of marriage.

Warsaw:  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.