Vow Renewal Etiquette

You can do almost anything you want. You cannot call this a wedding because you already had one. Do not hire an officiant because they are not performing legal services. Have a friend who is good at public speaking. Do hire a day of coordinator and do not ask guests to work. Also you cannot have showers and bachelorette parties because those are for unmarried women, not a vow renewal. Renewals are held on milestones such as 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th anniversaries.

As others have said, you can do pretty much anything you want. That includes having the renewal when you want, no need to feel tied to doing it around a particular anniversary. As long as you’re open with your guests that you’ve already done the legal bit, and what you’re doing now is the celebration with them, it’s fine.

Thank you so much for all of your input ladies. I love it all! I definitely love the openness to this. I seriously thought people would think it was weird how we did it backwards.

I do want a small celebration of having a venue and 2-3 of his closest friends and 2-3 of my closest friends. Our families are both small so we would be around 30-40 max with 10 open for extra guests just in case.

Our ideal place to do this would be in Southern California, Wayfarer's Chapel. The best things I love about this place is we aren't too close or too far from Disneyland where we and our guests (who all have little kids) can go to after the celebration.

I haven't thought of our reception, but I am open to either having the reception at the venue or since it is super intimate, we can reserve a private room in a nice restaurant for dinner. At the end of the day, I would love not stressing over the day and worry about things going wrong.

What a beautiful chapel! For that number of people, I really like the idea of a private room at a restaurant. It’s probably the easiest way to do something celebratory and low stress.

The only thing you can't do - is get legally married. Other than that, plan the wedding of your dreams

As another vow renewal lady - do whatever you like!

If you feel weird doing "wedding" things like a "first" dance, you can call it an anniversary dance. Walk down the aisle however you want - if you want dad to walk you, he can simply be "escorting" you, not technically "giving you away." You can still have an officiant (in fact, if you go with Wayfarer's, you have no choice - they require that one of their clergy officiates all ceremonies there.) However you go about it, you should have any of the trimmings you enjoy. I assume your family and friends know you are married - and also know you didn't get to have a wedding. As such, they likely won't be fazed by you having something akin to one now.

Also, I just have to tell you - I LOVE Wayfarer's Chapel! I have humored more than once having a vow renewal there myself, because it's featured in my husband's favorite movie.