When Should You Renew Your Wedding Vows? (And Why It Doesn't Have to Be a Big Anniversary)
Wondering when to renew your wedding vows? You don't need a milestone anniversary, or a reason. Here's how to know when the moment is right for the two of you.
VOW RENEWALS
The topic of a vow renewal very often comes up as a fleeting comment whilst doing the washing up, said as half a joke and half a secret wish to actually do it. So when is the right time to renew your vows? Well, the only right time is the one that’s right for you!
A vow renewal has no legal status in the UK so there's no notice to give, no registrar to book, no residency to prove, no paperwork needing to be completed. So your vow renewal can happen when you decide it happens, wherever you decide, however you decide.
A milestone anniversary is a brilliant excuse to have a vow renewal but it’s not a qualification.
If your milestone anniversary is three years away and you want to do this now, you're not jumping the gun. Some of the most moving reasons to renew your vows have nothing to do with a date at all. Any one of these is reason enough:
The wedding you had wasn't really yours. Someone else's venue, someone else's guest list, someone else's idea of what a wedding should be.
It was small and quick by necessity. A registry office, two witnesses, back to work the next morning.
You've come through a genuinely hard stretch together, and you'd like to mark the fact that you came out of it still holding hands.
The children are grown and gone, and for the first time in decades a day could actually be about the two of you.
You finally have the time, the money, or the energy that you simply didn't have the first time round.
Nothing in particular. You love each other, and you'd like a room full of your favourite people to hear you say it out loud.
Not one of those is a lesser reason than a round number.
The first time you said your vows, you were making a promise about a life you hadn't lived yet. You had no idea what "for better or worse" was going to ask of you. Now you do. You know exactly what you were signing up for, and you'd choose it again. A vow renewal shouldn't look anything like your wedding did, because you're not the same two people who got married, and the whole point is that you've got thirty years of material now that you didn't have then.
So how far ahead should you plan it?
Because there's no legal process to work around, the timeline is set entirely by the people and the place, not by paperwork. If your milestone falls next year, autumn is a sensible time to start thinking about it. Spring and summer dates get claimed early, and if you want family travelling from a distance, they'll thank you for the notice. If you'd rather do something small and soon, that's often very doable, precisely because there's nothing official to wait for.
The only real deadline is the people you want in the room with you.
If you've been circling this idea for months, or years, I’d love to have a chat and explore what it could look like. No obligation, no hard sell, just a conversation about the two of you and what you'd want this day to be.
Get in Touch
If this sounds like the sort of ceremony you want for your celebration then I'd love to have a chat. You can book a no-obligation call with me here.
Check out my other blog posts here.
