This week is my 10th wedding anniversary.
When I got married John Howard was Prime Minister and there were no iPads. It was a dark time.
Traditionally, gifts of tin or aluminium were given when a couple reached their 10th wedding anniversary. In the past, couples married early and stayed married forever. Now in the era of Kim Kardashian, 10 years of marriage is such an achievement, it merits the gift of diamonds.
I’m not expecting to be surprised by a diamond ring though. Instead I’ve organised for my husband and I to renew our vows at a beach house a few hours from Sydney in front of a small group of family and friends.
I have to say, if you told me even a few years ago I’d be doing anything as cheesy as renewing my vows, I would have scoffed.
There are so many reasons not to renew your vows. Vow renewals have a bad reputation. Indeed, they could justifiably be characterised as ridiculous. They have no legal standing. To some it might look like you want all the attention, pomp and presents of a wedding even though you are already married. And at a time when gay men and women can’t even get married once, renewing your vows looks like hubris.
Of course there will be those who think (forgive my mangled Shakespeare) “they doth protest too much”. That in getting married again, the couple are saying to the world “see we are really happy, really we are”. Are we tempting fate?
There were a few times in the months leading up to the vow renewal, often during a fight with my husband, I would think: better call this thing off. Seal and Heidi Klum have a lot of answer for. The famous couple renewed their vows in highly publicised and romantic ways every year for seven years until she ran away with her German bodyguard.
There were lots of reasons not to renew our vows, but there was still one compelling reason to do so. To celebrate the fact we survived 10 difficult years of marriage and are still in love.
My husband and I had a very short courtship (so short, in fact, I suspect a few people thought I was pregnant). I’d met him through his sister, loved and respected his family, and so it didn’t seem completely reckless to accept his marriage proposal after dating for only 6 weeks.
We had a small wedding in Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens. We stood in front of the celebrant and made promises about a life together. We promised to love each other until death, a stretch from that day’s sunny celebration to difficult conversations over a hospital bed sometime in the distant future. Looking back its clear we meant what we said, but how could we have any idea about what we were promising, whether we were indeed capable of following through?
Our early years of marriage seemed blessed. We moved into a nice apartment, got good jobs, travelled, decided we’d get pregnant, got pregnant right away, moved into a nice house, had our first daughter. Everything seemed easy.
Then it got harder.
My husband was made redundant during the GFC (it took a few months to find another job).
We struggled to get pregnant again. It took four years to have our twin daughters. Those four years were incredibly difficult for both of us, full of heartbreak, botched communication and periods of painful isolation. When our baby girls arrived last September it felt like our luck had returned and, in large part, we’ve set aside the sadness of the past. Like most couples renewing their vows, we’re doing so to celebrate survival, the affirmation of continuing love and respect after hard times.
We’d always had tentative plans to spend our 10 year anniversary together, without kids, in an exciting Asian city like Hong Kong or Singapore. That was when we were convinced we’d have a few kids over the age of three by the time 10 years rolled around, who were old enough to leave with caring relatives. But of course, best laid plans …
When it came time to decide what to do as we approached the anniversary date we decided a weekend away with dear friends would be nice. It was around 4am in the morning some time in November, when I was feeding my girls in the grey light, I decided that I wanted to renew our vows. I felt so certain it was the right thing to do.
So certain, in fact, I went ahead and planned it all in secret without informing my husband. He knew we were going away with friends. But he didn’t know I’d organised for an 11am vow renewal ceremony on the Saturday to be conducted by our oldest family friend. Or for his parents to serve bellinis beforehand, the peach and champagne cocktail we drank at our wedding lunch. Or for our seven year old daughter to give a speech about our family as part of a ceremony. Or for many of our original wedding guests and newer friends to join us for a special meal afterwards. And so on.
I set it all up and silently looked forward to the surprise. Every now and then I’d quiz my husband, “if you met me today, would you marry me again?” He’d laugh and say yes or joke, “as if I’d marry a single mum with three kids even if the kids looked like me”. I was confident he’d be happy with the surprise and enjoy the day.
A few weeks before the big event, I went to pick up some jewellery I’d had made for the occasion. Mum had given me her wedding ring and the wedding rings of her parents, white and yellow gold, and a local maker had used them to fashion a new ring for me, to sit underneath my wedding ring. It is a simple white gold band with 10 yellow gold grooves to mark the years spent together. I had some cufflinks made for my husband, each cufflink adorned with a small replica of a medal his grandfather received for service in the Second World War. Driving home from the jewellers, I thought to myself, I’ll give him the cufflinks and tell him tonight.
I made the admission at a neighbourhood bar, as the twins slept in the pram beside us (our daughter was having a sleep over at my mum’s house, writing and practising her speech for the ceremony). He laughed and told me he was chuffed, high praise for such a reserved man.
“I better get my wedding suit altered and dry cleaned”, he said. Ten years of my cooking and he’d gained a few kilos (that's not to imply I could squeeze into my wedding dress after a decade and three kids). Instead I was in conversation with a woman from country Victoria (I’d discovered her on Instagram) who made dresses using old lace and vintage fabrics. I’ll be wearing sky blue, a favourite colour of the whole family. A square of the fabric from my dress will be tucked into his suit pocket.
As the days pass before the vow renewal, a small part of me wonders whether I’ve made the right decision. Will I feel silly, standing there, getting married all over again? I was never one of those girls who dreamed of their wedding since childhood. Unlike 10 years ago, this Saturday, when I promise to love my already-husband for better and for worse, I’ll understand what that really means. And I am confident that I’ll wholeheartedly believe these words when I say them …
It was with great joy I pledged my love and commitment to you on our wedding day ten years ago.
Since then we have renovated, moved and bought houses. Left and started jobs. Argued about furniture. Travelled. Had three beautiful children and bought one fabulous dog.
Our family and friends have supported us over this decade. I hope they will continue to love and support us as we love and support them. And hope the next ten years will bring us the same measure of happiness as we’ve enjoyed in the ten years that have past.
I am so happy today, in the presence of dear family and friends, to reaffirm my commitment to you, and once again, to promise to love you, honour you, and comfort you, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better and for worse, as long as we both shall live.