Renewing Your Wedding Vows

Renewing your wedding vows has become a popular, even fashionable, part of celebrating a wedding anniversary especially during the last few decades.. Couples who have been married for one year and those celebrating fifty or more years together seem to derive benefit from renewing their wedding vows int he company of family and friends. It’s not that couples feel their continued success or happiness depends upon a new promise of fidelity, but rather that renewing wedding vows allows them to celebrate in a public or family setting the love that is so important in their lives. Because those who are renewing their wedding vows are doing so after a year or more, they can bring to the ceremony their shared experiences as well as their hopes for the future. Still when it comes time to put your ideas into words a few suggestions for renewing your wedding vows can be helpful.

Including Your Family Couples who gather to celebrate the renewal of their wedding vows with their extended family may want to reference family members in their vows. This type of inclusionary approach can actually reduce the emotional strain and make the occasion more festive than emotionally draining. With your spouse simply make a list of relatives who you wish to include in this way and then select their most recognizable positive trait that you would somehow like to better model in your own marriage.

To make certain that no one is offended , either select all members of a generation to include or none at all. For example if you have three children and you and your spouse have many siblings you might decide just to refer to your children by name and not mention siblings or mention siblings as a group thus offending no one. Even when you include family names in your vows make sure to leave room for several vows that are personal for just the two of you . Some examples follow:

I promise in the years ahead to be as kind as Lexi, as enthusiastic as Ben and as thoughtful as Sarah.
I pledge to you the kind of lasting love we have witnessed between Mary and Henri, Madeline and Mike, and Kathy and Justin.

I vow that in the days, weeks and years to come I will continue to love you better and hold you ever dearer even than I have til now. And that I will continue to share all my love, my strength, and every adventure to come with you, my joy and my life.

Vows I Have Learned Perhaps you would enjoy takeing another novel approach to renewing your wedding vows by using them to describe in a sense how your marriage has helped you to grow and has lifted up your life. These kinds of vows can show an underlying gratitude to your spouse for the ways in which you have grown together. Vows that contrast old ways of living with hopes for an even brighter future can also be used to introduce a touch of personal humor if you choose to lighten the moment or draw the assembled group into the joy of your celebration. Examples that might give you some direction are:

I promise in the years to come, not just to be quietly patient but to share with you conversation, company and whatever comfort I can provide.

I vow to you not just to show kindness in catastrophe, but rather a sincere willingness to hear and understand your concerns and your troubles and your triumphs, big and small.

I promise not just to love you passionately but also compassionately leaving no doubt how important each detail of your life is to me.

I promise not just to love you for all you do for me, for us, but to value who you are and the life you lead each and every day.

Finally I promise that renewing my vows will help me to recall with each new day, how blessed I am to be able to renew again my loving commitment to all that our life together has come to be – to me, to you, to us.

Vows, Even If, Even When For couples who are comfortable with one another, have a good sense of each other and a good sense of humor too, it can be fun to prepare vows that share the comic side of married life. Bringing humor into your vows gives a festive air to your celebration and draws people into the daily reality that has been your married life for how many every years you have shared together. But don’t forget to leave time and space for a vow or two that perhaps are just from the heart. Of course when you write your own vows sometimes you discover that the greatest truth and the deepest statement of your love can be held in a comic verse or line. If your marriage has been fun and funny for ten years or fifty, why not pledge to keep it that way forever. People who really know you really won’t be that surprised. The examples below might give you an idea or two.

Today I renew my marriage vows to you and promise that in the years to come I will
continue to cherish you, even when I am watching football

I promise to honor you in my heart, even when I am moaning about taking out the trash

I promise to love you eternally, even if you snore all night long, again.

Mostly I promise to take joy in who you are and greater joy in knowing that you love me just as I do you, yesterday, today and for all our tomorrows.

Renewing your wedding vows need not be a chore, nor do your vows have to turn your celebration into a emotional tear fest.. By adding your own creative touch, your personal brand of humor and your recognition of who is sharing your anniversary with you, you and your spouse can enjoy writing and renewing your wedding vows. In fact you may be so good at it that you turn it into an annual event. There are worse reasons for a party.