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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Aibu to ask your opinion on renewing wedding vows

166 replies

Whatsername17 · 30/04/2017 19:27

Really interested to hear other people's opinions on this. An acquaintance of mine is renewing her vows on her 5th wedding anniversary. The event is going to be like a second wedding - big dress, wedding breakfast etc. I was chatting to dh about the venue, which is lovely, and dh said it would be nice to renew our vows one day. We've been married 7 years. I quite fancy doing it, but just us and our kids in Vegas or somewhere similar, perhaps for the 10th or 15th anniversary. Dh thinks friends and family would want to come so we should do it here. It's all completely hypothetical but mumsnet is always good for a general consensus before I consider the idea or bin it off completely. What I'm basically asking is people's opinions on vow renewals. Naff or not? It's not a judgement on my friend either, I'm very much a 'do what makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anyone' so I'm not making a judgement.

OP posts:

WhooooAmI24601 · 01/05/2017 20:08

Friends of ours did this last summer. It was a beautiful day and a lovely party in the evening but DH growled at me not to get any ideas; he says it makes his arse clench. I doubt we'd do it because he hates the limelight.

chocolatesavedmysanity · 01/05/2017 20:09

Didn't mean to post! 5 years is very soon... unless they had a small wedding initially or perhaps financial or other constraints meant they couldn't celebrate in the way the wanted.

My PIL renewed their vows after 40 years and it was lovely. Blessing in the church followed by an 'evening reception' type party. No fuss, just sausage roll and cake. It was lovely... they still have so much love for each other after all this time!

TowerRavenSeven · 01/05/2017 20:17

Our wedding was a sad affair, my mum was diagnosed with a terminal illness the week of our wedding and died five months later. Five years later we were going to renew our vows to try and create some happy memories but at the last minute just changed it to a catered dinner. We've been married 17 years now and I have no plans on ever renewing them. Every year at church they do an anniversary prayer and that's good enough for me.

Whileweareonthesubject · 01/05/2017 20:23

When I got married, our vows were for 'as long as we both shall live, til death us do part, or however it was phrased back then. Unless one of the couple has broken their vowd, I don't see why anyone would need to renew their vows and definitely not after such a short length of time.

BadTasteFlump · 01/05/2017 22:00

I don't get it. Maybe if a couple have split then got back together then there's a point to it, but personally I meant them when I said them first time round and still do - they don't need to be 'renewed'.

Adarajames · 01/05/2017 23:33

Us witches do a new set every year and a day traditionally, but doesn't mean that gets stuck to either and some still cheat! But a fire and broomstick is far less fuss than a big church do

CheeseQueen · 02/05/2017 01:01

Not read any of the replies, so just going off my honest reaction.
Truly? I think it's lovely.An affirmation of your vows and to show you still love each other as much then as you did now.

CheeseQueen · 02/05/2017 01:08

Means one of you has had an affair

Whaaaaattt?! Why?! That's your head and your intepretation, surely. I think a renewal of vows is lovely, says you both still love each other, still both committed.
Why does cheating have to enter the picture to want to do that?!

Pallisers · 02/05/2017 01:12

I got married in an Ireland that had no divorce.

I thought long and hard about my vows as did DH. I meant them then and I have no need to renew them in any way.

I think having an anniversary party is lovely. I've been to 25th/ 30th/40th/ 50th wedding parties. No one renewed anything - their original vows were still good. They just celebrated the last however number of years together.

Having a renewal of vows party 5 years in would make me roll my eyes. Didn't Heidi Klum and Seal do it every year with a new outfit for each of them and a new way for everyone to look at them being the focus of all eyes. they are divorced now.

CheeseQueen · 02/05/2017 01:14

Half the guests will be speculating about which one of you has had an affair.
Argh, really? In a few years I'll have been married 20 years.
Recently thought it would be a nice thing to do when it rolls around.
Never a HINT of infidelity from either side.
Surely it just means that you still love each other and want to re-affirm your vows as they still mean as much as the day you met?!

PerspicaciaTick · 02/05/2017 01:17

I think ROV is lovely when a couple have been together for decades. To stand up and say that you still love each other and are not just together through habit is rather wonderful and if you can celebrate with children and grandchildren (who weren't there first time around) then all the better.
But less than a decade after the first lot of vows seems a bit OTT.

Ellisandra · 02/05/2017 01:36

I'm definitely in the well populated camp of thinking that it just cheapens your original vows.

First time round, I would be excited for you - it is really meaningful, to make those promises planning for them to be forever.

If I heard someone "renewing" them (it's not a passport, FFS!) I wouldn't be moved because they'd just be for the next 5 or whatever year stretch.

It's attention seeking, dull bandwagon crap, reeks of an affair (even if there hasn't been one) and undoes the original wonderful sentiment.

Chamonix1 · 02/05/2017 06:43

Think 5 years is a bit naff, yes.
I think for a very special anniversary like silver anniversary it's a sweet thing to do, a little ceremony downscaled "wedding" but until then, no. Just an excuse for a second wedding and I'd wonder who'd had the affair.

honeylulu · 02/05/2017 07:29

We renewed our vows at our youngest's christening. I say "renewed" but in fact we asked for just a blessing of our marriage - the vicar originally gave us a service sheet (during the planning) that included reciting almost the whole marriage ceremony. That wasn't what we wanted. As we explained to him we didn't feel we needed to be married again or "more married". In fact once the blessing only was left in it was really "blink and you'll miss it"! It was lovely though.
Here are our reasons:

This had been our parish church we had attended since before our wedding 15 years earlier. The old vicar had refused to marry us because my husband was divorced. We got married at a Methodist Church instead but I'd always felt sad we hadn't married at "our " Church which we had a real and longstanding connection to.
Our daughter had been born after a long and difficult struggle with secondary infertility, a stillbirth and miscarriages. Her baptism was also an occasion to thank God for bringing her into our lives and celebrate. So it was also a celebration of overcoming a long and difficult time in our marriage. (No affairs!!)
Much more superficial - we had been very poor at the time of my original wedding and I had always felt a bit sad that I'd not been able to afford to get my hair done etc. It was nice to do that.
We have made some absolutely epic friends since our original wedding and some of our older friends had dropped off the radar - wanted the chance to have a proper celebration with them. This included some of them becoming our children's godparents.

So I think there are some genuine reasons sometimes.

To be honest though our ceremony did get a bit out of hand. The dress i chose (cream lace prom dress) was probably a bit too wedding-y and we also had posies/buttonholes etc. In hindsight maybe we should have toned down those touches. My mother was a bit disapproving ("OTT" was what she said). But we had a great day, it was lovely and really meant something.
It was exactly 2 years ago today I've just realised!

Olddear · 02/05/2017 08:06

Silver wedding coming up for us. We said our vows at the time, meant them and we've kept them. We are having a private celebration in a beautiful, memorable place for us, where we will raise a glass and hope for another 25 years together!

JustTrying2Help · 02/05/2017 08:09

I said to my DH that I'd like to do it one day (possibly for our 10 / 20 year - been together 8 now) especially as our wedding was hijacked by my mother who had everything she wanted and my dress ended up being the biggest mess ever. I'd like to do it the way we wanted and have a nice happy relaxing day instead of the stress that my mother made it into.

However DH is firmly of the belief that people only renew their vows if they've been having problems in the marriage to show they're re-committing. 😬

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