Public Ceremony Help

Just embrace it for what it is. You’ll have a whole year of marriage under your belt. You can revise your vows and it will never seem forced if the love is real.


I think you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. It’ll be a lovely ceremony and reception.

Do what you want!

While I am not of the camp that would be offended by a couple pretending not to be married when they were (I don't think it's anyone's business, as it doesn't affect them in any way), I do think it would be odd. Do your guests know you are married? This would likely make everyone pretty uncomfortable.

There are many ways you can make this ceremony special. You actually have a good amount of flexibility because it isn't a wedding ceremony.

Some ideas you could consider to make the vows themselves special: reflect on the last year of marriage (it's been a doozy for a lot of people thanks to the state of the world!) You could "piggyback" off your original vows by referencing them, but adding to them with the experience you have gained over the last year of marriage. Or, you could each find a special reading and reflect on why it's meaningful to you or why it represents your relationship. Have fun with it! There's nothing that says the "vows" portion needs to be vows to each other, especially if you aren't comfortable reciting vows again.

While so much weight is heaped on the getting married part, it's important to acknowledge that being married is special in its own right. Instead of trying to make it feel like a wedding, approach it as a celebration of how awesome being married is - since now you actually know how awesome it is.

My husband and I said traditional vows at our minimony, but we will be writing new vows for our upcoming big wedding. Everyone already knows that we are married, we didn't keep it a secret we just had to cancel our big wedding because of COVID like most brides. For our big wedding we will be having our bridal party and literally doing everything again (our bridal party were just guests for the minimony.)

We never got to really have our ceremony the way we wanted the first time, so we are basically changing the language of our original ceremony so it reads as people finally coming together to celebrate in the moment with us. We are fully owning the fact that we are already married and the "ceremony" itself is less than perfect, but we are making the most of the difficult year we've been dealt and still celebrating in spite of it.

There will be no pronouncement of marriage and no exchange of rings, and the "vows" we do will be more like sharing what we've learned about marriage and ourselves in our first year of marriage, and promises we make to continue doing the things we do to make our marriage thrive. We haven't 100% figured it out yet, but because we didn't have an aisle, a procession, or even much sentimental talk the first time around, it is really important for us to do that now.