Renewal of vows after nine months of marriage?

[BalloonSlayer]

There is an article in the Laydee section of the Times today about the current vogue for having Vow Renewal ceremonies.

Apparently the Black Swan Hotel at Helmsley, North Yorkshire have launched a £2,500 wedding vow renewal package.

You get a certificate and everything.

One couple are renewing their vowa after nine months of marriage because they had 140 people to their first wedding and it was "Too big. So we decided to have another one."

AIBU to think ?

I am a celebrant and I am asked to officiate at quite a few vow renewals. I sometimes enjoy them more, and find them more meaningful than the original weddings.

Sometimes the wedding can be so much about the dress, the arrangements, the seating plan, the wants of relatives etc, that the real purpose of the vow and the ceremony can be diminished. Vow renewals usually include much more personal thoughts on the wording and the meaning, and are sometimes made at a time when couples feel more confident about having the celebration that they want. I particularly love renewals that are combined with baby / child blessings, they can be really special and beautiful.

Maybe that's just my cynical marketing approach though

I could understand it happening after 9 months after if it was a blessing of a civil marriage, as that is different to renewing vows (I would like a church blessing one day)

I think some people are just grumpy though- I think it can be a romantic thing to do and couples will have many different reasons for wanting to do it. Although, if it was me I'd renew them on a beach or somewhere abit different!

I understand that renewing vows means a lot for some people, but to me surely if it meant enough to do it first time round, you dont need to do it again.

Say you have been together 20 or so years, been through the ups and downs of life and want to re-affirm your love for each other, then I could get my head around it, but 9 months???

Seems like a waste of money to me.

God this sort of thing makes me sick esp in a recession where some people are really struggling It is another example of overblown gesture and expense when something simple would suffice!

Well, some of us have faith and believe that the details of the ceremony matter. Some of us don't. You shouldn't assume that a second ceremony is all show, just because that's what your first ceremony was.

venus - I want to combine my renewal with a 'celebration" of my 2 DC. What type of ceremonies do you celebrate, just out of interest and in what type of venue? I am not looking to spend much, just mark the occasion and then have family meal/drinks afterwards.

Just trying to get some ideas of what other people do for this sort of thing!

anonymousbrainsnatcher I have sent you a pm.

me and dh will have been married three years in may. on our ten year anniversary i want to re new our vows the way i wished we had made them in the first place. me him and a cheesy Elvis in Vegas. no one else.

Nine months in though is stupid. not much security in the marriage if you feel the need to do it again after a short period of time. and if was a guest id be pissed off at having to do the whole thing again. i think doing anything that involves more than you dh and possibly dcs is just attention seeking. unless you never got the big wedding the first time round and you feel like you missed out.

YANBU. The only renewal of wedding vows which has not seemed unreasonable to me was when dh's grandparents renewed theirs - after 70 years of marriage. They had the meal they'd dreamed of but could not have on their wedding day because of food-shortages and they put the original printed menus from their wedding on the table (they had kept them!). Truly lovely. 9 months seems somewhat premature.

You make the vows ONCE for life when you get married and IMHO that should be it. I cannot see the point of renewing them at all ever, you don't make them for a set amount of time, but for all time. Ergo, they never need renewing.

Sounds like this will become the next money earner for the "wedding industry". -

We renew ours annually, but we don't spend money or have a party, just go to a place that is special to us and reaffirm our vows to each other.

Totoros - why did you hate your wedding?

I think I'll offer a "I missed my chance to be a bridezilla first time round and I ain't gonna make the same mistake this time!" package.

It will involve everyone being required to wear themed costumes, a mass choreographed dance routine from Step Up 3D, and end with me and DH avin it large in a jacuzzi filled with champagne.

If the couple want to do it again because the first one was "too big", I have 2 suggestions:

1. Just have your closest family and friedns for a meal/party to celebrate the first anniversary.

2. Spend the £2,500 on a really good anniversary second honeymoon and enjoy sun sea sand and whatever else takes their fancy!

another - what if you and your DH have different ideas of what the ceremony should be?

I always assumed that renewing your vows was a rather odd way of announcing to the world that one of you had cheated.

Not sure why you'd want to TBH.

Me too, nancydrewrocked.

I don't see why you can't just renew your vows to each other in your house or scene of your setting if you wanted to. I don't get why you have to pay someone else £2500 and think some people have more money than sense.
We wrote our own vows and I can't remember what our vows were and suspect they've got lost. All seems very pointless to me. I'd suspect people had had an affair or 2 if they wanted to do this.
It does seem a "me, me me" attention grabbing thing to do.

Just go on a nice romantic holiday and invent new vows to say to whisper to each other and stop being drama queens.

I actually think we don't celebrate relationships enough in our society.

I wouldn't renew my vows but when dh and I make it to 10/15/20/plus years I would love to celebrate it with a party.

Keeping relationships going takes a lot of work, maybe we don't validate that enough.

Are they still called vows if they weren't said in church?

I don't get it either. Have a party by all means but why does it matter whether you hated the guests at your wedding, or said the vows in a place you didn't like or on a Tuesday? The vows are vows and when you said them you meant them for life. They don't have an expiry date. Someone renewing theirs would make me think the opposite of what you'd want. I wouldn't think there's a lovely strong relationship, I'd think ooh what happened there then.

We renewed our vows on our first anniversary.
We didn't spend anywhere near that kind of money tho.
Also think I should mention in our defense (!) that we had the original ceremony in South Africa and none of my family attended. We always planned to renew our vows and have a blessing so my mum could attend my 'wedding' She died before we actually held the blessing so we did it anyway because it was what she wanted.

Well we'd quite like to. DH didn't want a wedding ring 20 years ago and has always regretted it. If renew our vows it means the ring will be blessed. Don't know what they do about the "procreation of children" one though!!

Ooh go for it onceamai. I knew a couple who had a blessing in church (where they had originally married years ago) invited friends and family and went on the have a few drinks after in a pub after. Was lovely

It's different if you've got a specific reason, like onceamai or MrsSOAK but its' the 'ooh we've been married ten years, let's renew our vows' type I don't get. You want to celebrate, have a fuck off big party but renewing vows is silly.