Our 10 Year Vow Renewal - One Year On

Today is Phil and my 11 year wedding anniversary.

Which means for a whole year I have procrastinated about blogging our 10 year vow renewal. Oops.

And more importantly it means I get to celebrate 11 years of marriage with the love of my life.
This year we’ll be doing so by hopefully eating lunch together while our toddler sleeps and then I’ll be helping a lovely couple get married.

Last year, I spent the afternoon having my hair and makeup done by one of my divine future brides, Phoebe Barrett (also known as Phoebe Fever), which was delightful because she is one of the sweetest people you’d be lucky enough to meet, and she helped me feel like a million dollars.

The weather was a bit iffy, and we only had the option of doing it at the beach - which I was hating because I felt so crappy for not having a wet weather back up and potentially making two of my vendor mates stand in the rain.

Luckily it didn’t rain, and the extremely talented Shane Shepherd and Annie Molenaar met us at Wategos Beach at about 5pm.
We had packed a whole basket of food for the kids to snack on, and some little beach toys for the baby, but in the rush of getting down to the beach, it got left in the car.
For someone who has so much experience with being around tired, hungry kids at weddings, I really blew it on this account.

We walked along the beach together as a family with Annie and Shane, and it was such a surreal feeling being the woman in the white dress holding flowers.
(Thanks to the lovely Jen and Jess from Haven Botanical in Mullumbimby for creating such a gorgeous bouquet incorporating my fav, paper flowers, to my friend Lizzy for helping me get hold of a sold out Spell gown and another clever friend, Krystle Knight, who I bought my jewels from).

Annie began the ceremony, and again it was very strange for me to be one of the people who was the centre of the ceremony.
I felt a little outside of myself listening to Annie tell our story, which she did so beautifully and with such care.

Apart from our oldest child, the kids pretty quickly got bored with us thinking that we could be the centre of things for a heartbeat, and our littlest started building a sandcastle on both Annie and my feet, the big one joined in and upscaled the project, our older girl climbed a tree, which was halfway up the cliff and she had to be rescued halfway through our vows.

Phil also told each of the kids how much we love them, and how great they are - although he had to yell it up a tree to one of them.

It was a beautiful celebration of how chaotic our life is and a true reflection of what our relationship is like right now.
We don’t have enough time for us, and we are always having to put “us” aside.
The moments where we do find each other and truly connect are always magical.
That was an amazing realisation, if not a little poignant and irritating.

After the ceremony, we had a few portraits taken, and then everyone except me jumped in the ocean, (there was no way I was getting my pretty hair wet), and a beautiful rainbow appeared.

Afterwards we went out for burgers in Byron Bay and then home for an early night.
We were sitting in bed, and I said, “can we say our vows to one another again?”.

So we did, in a space that wasn’t half as picturesque, but where we had no interruptions and could listen to and appreciate what the other person had written.
It was so nice, just us.

So my takeaway from this is as a professional wedding vendor is as follows:
If you’re going to have a vow renewal…

• If you have kids, think about having someone there to rescue your kids from cliffside trees so you don’t have to.
  (We didn’t want to invite anyone because who do you invite, and then do you have to feed them, is it now an event?… etc etc)

• Take snacks!

• Hire an amazing photographer who makes you feel comfortable. Vow renewals are super intimate and you want to feel at ease with who is capturing it.

• Now, this is a little controversial, as I am a celebrant, and I’m all for celebrants getting paid to do what they are good at, and I LOVED what Annie did for us, but at a vow renewal (vow renewal - NOT a wedding), a celebrant isn’t essential.
  From our experience, just saying nice things to each other alone later in the night was the best bit - so you can totally do that yourself.
  In fact - say nice things to your partner all the time. It’s good for you.

• If you want a celebrant to tell your story - totally pick Annie or me to do it. :)
  Again, as it’s a really intimate setting, it needs to be someone you like and feel comfortable with.

Note: I’d like to credit Kate O’Neill from the Northern Star who interviewed me for their Northern Rivers Style February Issue and asked me a bunch of questions about our vow renewal.
Some of the content from her article is paraphrased in this blog post - thanks for organising my thoughts for me, Kate!
You can find the whole article online here.