By Moriah Couch 
After 11 years of marriage, my husband and I finally got the wedding we had always dreamed of. Let me explain. We married young. At the time, all we cared about was being able to say we were husband and wife. We couldn’t afford a wedding like what we really wanted. So rather than waiting for our perfect wedding, we did a small, simple ceremony with simple clothing and a Dairy Queen cake. Nothing fancy or expensive. It was what we needed at that point in our lives. On our wedding night, we said we would do a vow renewal on our 10-year anniversary and go all out. And we held onto that.
I always regretted that we missed out on all the traditional wedding things. Picking out a dress. Seeing my husband in a nice suit or tux. Walking down the aisle. The first dance. The professional wedding pictures. We missed out on all of it. I didn’t think I would care, but it turned out that I did. Anytime I saw anything about weddings over the next 10 years, it made me feel sad for missing out on those things myself. I had this intense ache for the things I never got to experience. So for years, I kept telling myself that someday, we would get to have the wedding we truly wanted.
Then our 10-year anniversary rolled around. It had been a rough year. My husband was recovering from a back injury that had him out of work for four months. Because of that setback, we couldn’t do our vow renewal and a vacation, which is what we had been planning. We had to choose between the two. After a lot of discussion, we decided that what we really needed that year was the vacation. So we made it a family thing. We packed up all three kids and drove from Minnesota to Florida.
My husband has family there, so we visited with them as well as did all our fun vacation things like going to the beach and exploring so many cool places and theme parks. It was the right call at that time and just the refresh we needed. But when we got home and the fun was over, that familiar ache returned. I realized what I had done. My husband and I talked it over and decided that we would make sure to do our renewal on our 15th anniversary. I was sad but agreed that we had made the right decision and tried to let it go.
Seven months later in January, after a very hard few months when I lost my cat I had had for 17 years, turned 30 years old, and suffered a major mental health crisis, I realized something: Why were we waiting? Why did the number matter for the vow renewal? Did it really have to be on a specific 10, 15, or 20 year anniversary? Why wait for something that was so important to us? It was then that I decided we were going to do our vow renewal that summer for our 11th anniversary.
I dug into research on wedding and vow renewal planning and was so excited. At first, I was nervous that it would be weird to do a vow renewal like a wedding, but I discovered that it’s actually quite common for people to do that. So I pushed forward with my plans. I realized that our anniversary fell on Father’s Day, so we pushed it back a couple of months and planned the renewal for a date in late August. It wasn’t on our anniversary, but that was okay. I was determined to make this work.
The planning was a lot more intense than I had expected. For months, I was stressed and worried that it wasn’t going to work out. I had found my dress by March, figured out the location by May, decided on a color scheme by June, but the rest really came together in the final week and days leading up to the ceremony. And honestly, I couldn’t believe how perfectly it all turned out! The decorations, the cupcakes, the punch, our outfits, it was better than I could have hoped for! And the icing on the cake was that our pictures turned out absolutely amazing!
This day held so much meaning for us for a number of reasons. We finally got the wedding of our dreams, and it was everything we could have wanted and more. We got to recommit to each other in front of God, family, and friends after 11 years of overcoming so much together. In our years of marriage, we have walked side by side through addictions, homelessness, financial hardships, mental and physical health struggles, loss of loved ones, all three of our children being diagnosed with autism and ADHD, me being diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and so much more.
It hasn’t always been easy, we have had to learn how to be good partners, good parents, and good to ourselves. We have both made mistakes along the way. We have grown together. Through it all we became closer and closer. No one can make me laugh like my husband. No one else can help me through my anxiety and panic attacks like he can. No one knows me better than this man I call my husband.
After 11 years of marriage, I can proudly say I’m married to my best friend. That I wouldn’t ever want to do this life with anyone else. And what a wonderful thing it is to be able to model this for our children. To show them a healthy, loving relationship. That their parents love each other so much they wanted to get married all over again! My husband and I both grew up with divorced parents. So it was extra special for us to be able to include our children in this celebration of our love.
Just like life, our vow renewal didn’t go one hundred percent perfectly. My boys got overwhelmed when we arrived, and they didn’t sit for the ceremony or get in any pictures with us. But when you have autistic children you have to go with the flow, and it was better to let them be than try to force it. I’m thankful to have a couple of pictures with my daughter though. All in all, I’m happy with how our day turned out. It was surreal to finally do this vow renewal after 11 years of talking about it. I was so worried at first about what people would think and how it would all turn out, but I don’t regret a single thing.
I would do it all over again in a heartbeat because I learned that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. All that matters is doing what is right for you. And this . . . this was what was right for us. This is something we had wanted for so long. And I’m just so glad that we pushed through and made this special day happen. I will cherish the memories for the rest of my life.
by Jenny Vanderberg Shannon 
by Heather Delaney 
by Jennifer Bailey 
