Wedding vows are promises made in the hope of a future together, but no couple knows what that future will look like. Be it a love marriage or an arranged one, the words exchanged at the altar are shaped by expectations of a life yet to unfold. Hence, marital vows can become more of a ritual. However, when they renew their vows years later, the couple knows exactly what those promises mean.For those who have spent decades together, renewing wedding vows is a way to revisit their commitment with a different perspective, having lived their lives through different stages – raising children, managing careers, navigating financial pressures and dealing with unexpected turns.Yet they have chosen to stay together despite changes they did not anticipate as newlyweds. A vow renewal offers an opportunity to pause, look back at the journey, and consciously choose one another all over again.As couples opt for vow renewals, celebrations have evolved, too. Some choose intimate ceremonies at destinations they have always wanted to visit, while others organise multi-day celebrations with family, friends, traditional rituals and elaborate receptions.DISCLAIMER: This article is based on information from the public domain and/or the experts we spoke to.Although social media and the wedding industry have put these celebrations in the limelight, the reasons are deeply personal. For many, it is less about recreating their wedding day and more about celebrating the marriage they have built since then.Celebrity couples renewing their vows In October 2024, Sanjay Dutt and Maanyata Dutt renewed their wedding vows, marking 16 years of marriage. More recently, Tamil actors Suriya and Jyotika celebrated their two decades together by renewing their vows. Sharing the moment on Instagram, Jyotika described it as a celebration of “20 years of love and war”. “This is a celebration of imperfections, of adjustments, of understanding, sacrifices, of loving each other selflessly. This is a celebration of ‘us’ — the people we have become for each other,” she wrote. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jyotika (@jyotika)In November 2024, Sunny Leone and Daniel Weber also renewed their vows in an intimate ceremony in the Maldives, marking 13 years of togetherness.Story continues below this adNot just another anniversaryFor Sharadh and Varsha Vajpayee, renewing their vows on their 25th wedding anniversary was a chance to reconnect beyond their responsibilities as parents and partners managing a household.Melissa and Dan, an Australian couple in their 60s, also share a similar sentiment.“After being married for so many years, raising children, managing work, and dealing with everything life throws at you, we realised that somewhere along the way, we’d become so caught up in our responsibilities that we’d stopped making time for us,” they say.Renewing their vows became a way to reconnect.“It wasn’t because we’d forgotten our original promises, but because we wanted to remind ourselves why we’d made them in the first place. We wanted to celebrate everything we’d been through, how far we’d come, and the fact that, after all these years, we still wanted to choose each other.”Story continues below this adSo, is a vow renewal just another way to celebrate a wedding anniversary?The distinction between an anniversary and a vow renewal is important, says Dr Munia Bhattacharya, senior consultant, clinical psychology, Marengo Asia Hospitals, Gurugram.“I often see that the real strain in a long marriage is not that couples stop caring about each other. It is that they can become so absorbed in managing life together that they stop paying attention to the relationship itself. They become a very efficient team and know how to solve problems together. But running a life together and being emotionally present in the relationship are two different things,” she says, adding, “An anniversary marks the passage of time. A vow renewal marks a change in the relationship.”The relationship, too, evolves over the years.“By the time a couple reaches 10, 15 or 20 years together, they are not the same two people who stood at the altar. They may have become parents, changed careers, experienced loss and success, cared for ageing parents, navigated financial pressures or simply grown in ways they could never have anticipated when they married,” Bhattacharya says.Story continues below this adThe second set of vows means something differentFor Melissa and Dan, their original wedding was about the future they imagined. Their vow renewal was about the life they had actually lived.“When we first got married, we were young, excited, and full of dreams about the life we were going to build together. We made promises about loving and supporting each other, but I don’t think we fully understood what those promises would mean in real life,” they say.Years later, they had experienced sleepless nights with young children, financial pressures, disagreements, and personal losses. They had also watched their children grow, achieved things together, and built a home filled with memories.The difference was not simply that they were older. They understood the weight of their promises because they had lived through the experiences that tested them.Story continues below this adRelationship coach Sidhharrth S Kumaar of NumroVani believes acceptance is central to this shift. Sharadh and Varsha Vajpayee“From my experience as a relationship coach, the primary reason couples increasingly feel drawn to renewing their wedding vows is not romance alone. It is acceptance. At the time of marriage, two people often commit to versions of each other that are still partly imagined. Years later, they have seen each other’s habits, emotional patterns, fears, limitations, strengths, and imperfections,” he says.Renewing vows has become a way to acknowledge all it has taken to keep building a life together.Kumaar suggests that “second vows should also be more specific. Instead of only saying, ‘I will always love you’, couples can commit to behaviours such as listening before becoming defensive, not withdrawing during conflict, protecting couple time, and addressing resentment before it accumulates.”Story continues below this adThe idea is to make the commitment relevant to the relationship as it exists today, rather than repeating words without reflecting on their meaning.A ceremony on their own termsThe freedom to personalise the occasion is another reason vow renewals can feel different from the original wedding.For Kajal, 38, the experience offered an opportunity to make choices that reflected their preferences. With matching cream-coloured outfits, the couple chose a location that holds meaning to them: the Triyuginarayan Temple.“We curated our own vows, not something that the Pandit ji told us, but something that we truly stand for. One of the funniest vows was the promise to take care of our pets together.”Story continues below this adThese seemingly small details show how a second set of vows can feel more personal, making room for everyday responsibilities and shared commitments that shape a relationship over time.Kajal also valued being able to invite only those who genuinely mattered. Looking back at how weddings have changed, she says the renewal gave them the freedom to include only the people they wanted, without feeling obliged to invite everyone.The flexibility extends to the format of the celebrations. Couples can choose a private ceremony followed by dinner, a traditional ritual at a meaningful location, or a larger gathering that brings together family and friends.Unlike the original wedding, which family expectations and established customs may shape, a vow renewal gives couples greater control over what they want to celebrate, with whom they want to celebrate, and how they want to mark it.Story continues below this adFrom intimate ceremonies to destination celebrationsThe wedding industry is seeing a range of approaches, from small family gatherings to elaborate destination events.Tina Bakshi, founder of Lateral Events, says social media has become a significant influence on how these occasions are planned.“Social media has become one of the primary factors shaping how the ceremony happens. Not just the vows, but the entire event, whether intimate or grand. The internet drives inspiration, especially from something that has recently gone viral,” she says.Spending varies considerably. According to Shanu Jain, founder and CEO of The Wedding Toli India, an intimate vow renewal can begin at around ₹1-2 lakh, sometimes less, depending on the arrangements.At the other end of the spectrum, destination celebrations can cost as much as lavish weddings. Jain cites an event in Goa where a hotel was booked for two days for around 200-250 guests, with the overall celebration costing close to Rs 1.75 crore. Another elaborate celebration reached approximately Rs 2 crore.“What has transformed is that couples tend to be very particular about what they choose to spend on. Since they have already had their wedding, there is often less pressure to recreate its scale or every ritual. So while an elaborate vow renewal can have a wedding-sized budget, it does not necessarily have a wedding-sized approach to spending,” Jain adds.Guest numbers range from 20-30 people for a small gathering to 150-300 for larger celebrations. Destination events may extend over two or three days, with the ceremony accompanied by dinners, entertainment and other festivities.Demand for vow renewals, however, is particularly strong around milestone anniversaries such as the 25th and 50th.“Small family-led vow renewals have existed for a long time, but they were not necessarily treated as a full-fledged event. What is changing is that more couples are now choosing to celebrate these milestones properly, sometimes with a destination celebration and professional planning,” she says.ALSO READ | He was still legally married, but his profile said ‘never’: The dark side of matrimonial matchmakingBakshi, meanwhile, observes that couples differ in how much they want to spend. Some prefer elaborate celebrations, while others favour smaller, carefully curated occasions.“There’s a mix of how lavish these things get. There’s a set audience who doesn’t believe in intimate celebrations, whereas many younger couples want things narrowed down and more curated, rather than grand. We see a mix of nearly 70/30, with a larger percentage still leaning towards a grand celebration,” she says.When the ritual becomes a turning pointBeyond the celebration, a vow renewal can also offer a couple a moment to reflect on the relationship’s emotional journey.Dr Bhattacharya says such rituals can help couples acknowledge transitions rather than move through them without stopping to reflect.“When they finally create space to talk about what they have been through, what they have learnt about each other and what they want from the years ahead, something can shift. They begin to see each other beyond their everyday roles,” she says.That is what makes these rituals psychologically interesting.“Rituals are not only about celebration. They can also help people process transitions. They give an emotional milestone a tangible form and allow a couple to acknowledge that they have entered a different stage of life,” says Dr Bhattacharya.She also sees the trend as part of a broader shift in how people understand marriage.“Earlier, staying together for decades was seen as an achievement itself. Today, couples are more conscious of emotional connection, companionship and whether both people continue to have space to grow within the relationship,” she adds.Celebrity celebrations and social media may have made vow renewals more visible, but she cautions against reducing the practice to imitation.“At its healthiest, a vow renewal isn’t about recreating the wedding or proving that the marriage lasted. It is about acknowledging that two people have moved through different stages of life together and giving themselves a moment to recognise where they are now,” she says.Choosing each other, all over againFor Priya and Madhav (pseudonyms used), the decision to renew their wedding vows stemmed from a desire to experience their wedding in a way that truly reflected them as a couple.“The first time around, we didn’t have much control over how the wedding turned out. It felt more like a wedding our parents were hosting for everyone else than something we planned for ourselves. We had always wanted a simple, intimate wedding, and renewing our vows allowed us to finally have that experience, exactly how we had imagined it,” they say.For them, the biggest difference was that this time, they actually knew each other.“Ours was an arranged marriage, and when we first got married, we barely had the chance to get to know one another. A year into our marriage, we understood each other much better, and even what we wanted from our relationship. Our original wedding was about beginning a journey together, not entirely knowing what lay ahead. Renewing our vows was about consciously choosing each other again, this time with a better understanding of who we were as individuals and as partners,” they say.As Dr Bhattacharya puts it, an anniversary says, “Look how far we have come.” A vow renewal says, “This is who we are today, and this is what we want the years ahead to look like.”For couples choosing to renew their vows, the promise is no longer made in anticipation of an unknown life. It is made with a clearer understanding of what sharing that life entails — and the decision to keep choosing each other.DISCLAIMER: This article is based on information from the public domain and/or the experts we spoke to.