Why do people renew their wedding vows?
For four reasons: a milestone anniversary, a marriage that survived something hard, a wedding they never properly got to have, or a change worth marking. There is no correct year and no tradition prescribing one — a renewal has no legal effect and no fixed form, so the timing is entirely the couple’s.
The four reasons
A milestone anniversary
The most common reason and the least interesting one. Ten, twenty-five and fifty years are the usual hooks, mostly because they are round numbers that justify inviting people. This is the renewal that looks most like a second wedding, and the one most likely to have a guest list, a venue and a bill.
A marriage that came through something
An illness, a bereavement, a bad stretch that both people know was bad. This renewal is not a celebration of an unbroken record — it is a deliberate statement that the promise was tested and held. The vows are usually the best ones, because there is something specific to say.
A wedding they never got to have
Couples who eloped, married at a courthouse in eleven minutes, married in a hurry before a deployment, or married in 2020 in front of a laptop. The renewal is the ceremony they wanted the first time, held years later with everyone actually present. The marriage needs nothing; the guest list does.
A change worth marking
A conversion or a return to faith, a move home after decades away, children old enough to witness it, a retirement, a diagnosis that reframes the time left. These renewals tend to be small, quick and unpublicised, and they are often the ones the couple remembers most.
When: there is no right year
The 10th, 25th and 50th dominate because they are round, and because a round number is a socially acceptable reason to ask forty people to give up a Saturday. That is the whole of the convention. No church, register office or etiquette authority sets a qualifying interval, and nobody will consider it early.
The one timing consideration that does matter is practical: a renewal held for a number tends to become an event, and a renewal held for a reason tends to stay a ceremony. If you would rather not plan a wedding twice, pick the reason.
The reason people are least willing to say
A significant share of renewals follow a rupture — an affair, a separation, a year both people would rather not describe. This is rarely stated on the invitation, and the wedding industry writes about renewals as though it never happens.
The churches are more honest about it than the industry is. The Episcopal Book of Occasional Services ends its anniversary rite with a rubric noting that the form may be adapted where it is used as an act of reconciliation. Common Worship’s preface carries an optional clause asking God’s forgiveness “for all that has been amiss”, and the book says explicitly that it may be important to include it when a couple are celebrating a reconciliation. Both texts are quoted in full on the ceremony script page.
If that is your reason, you are in more company than the photographs suggest, and there is authorised wording written with you in mind.
What it does and doesn’t do
A renewal changes nothing legally. You do not re-marry, nothing is registered, no licence is issued and no officiant needs a licence to lead it. Your anniversary date does not move. If you want the ceremony to carry legal weight, the honest answer is that it cannot — there is nothing left to make legal.
Decided you’re doing it? How to renew your vows has the six decisions in the order they need making.
Common questions
- What does it mean to renew your wedding vows?
- It means saying your marriage promises again, out loud, usually in front of people. It has no legal effect and changes nothing about your marital status — you were married before the ceremony and you are married after it. What changes is that it has been said again, deliberately, by two people who now know what the promise involved.
- What year should you renew your wedding vows?
- There is no correct year. The 10th, 25th and 50th anniversaries are the common hooks because they are round, not because any tradition prescribes them. Renewals held for a specific reason rather than a round number are at least as common.
- Is it bad luck to renew your wedding vows?
- No, and there is no superstition attached to renewals of the kind that surrounds weddings. The event is too modern and too informal to have accumulated any. Nothing in it is a re-marriage, so none of the folklore about marrying twice applies.
- Do people renew vows after an affair or a separation?
- Yes, and the churches that publish renewal services acknowledge it directly. The Episcopal Book of Occasional Services notes that its anniversary rite may be adapted as an act of reconciliation, and Common Worship’s preface includes an optional clause asking forgiveness “for all that has been amiss” which the book says may particularly matter for a couple celebrating a reconciliation.