Our Vow Renewal

When Brian and I got married in May of 2020, we had to significantly change our plans due to the pandemic.  We initially hoped to have a small ceremony in 2020 and then a bigger event in 2021, but with the pandemic still an active threat, we had to scale back our plans for the vow renewal too.  However, we still had a lovely day, and I wanted to take a moment to share it with you.

Thanks so much to Corey Butler of Revolution Summer Photography for these lovely photos.  If you're in northern New England and are looking for a wedding or engagement photographer, I highly recommend checking him out.  Click here to go straight to his site.  You can also find him on Facebook at Revolution Summer Photography and on Insta @rsummerphoto.

My sis Katie and Brian had to put on my heel covers for me because they have more muscles than I do.  You can see the card soldiers I made for my wedding in the backgroun.  There was a very strong chance of rain this time around, so I kept the card soldiers at home, but I made sure they still had a part in the day.

Putting the finishing touches on my makeup.

Katie fastening my belt.  My wedding dress was a DIY project that I threw together.  Basically, I took an old romper of mine and created a belt and a tulle overskirt to make it more gown-like.  You can learn more about it in this post.  I had made the belt with snap closures, but on the wedding day, the snaps popped open any time a bent down or moved in just the wrong way.  I ended up making a new belt for the vow renewal by sewing hook and bar closures to a piece of ribbon, and that worked really well.  The belt stayed closed this time.

Entering the gardens.

Now that we're vaccinated, dad was able to walk me down the "aisle."  Also, here you can see my DIY bouquet, which you can learn more about in this post.

Brian winging his vows.

Me reading my vows.

Yay, we're still married.

Chatting with grammie.  This ended up being one of my favorite pictures of the day.  Grammie couldn't be there in person for our wedding, but I was glad she could be there for the vow renewal.

For health and safety reasons, as well as to comply with our venue's policies, we had to severely restrict the guest list, inviting only in state family members.  But we were able to include a few people who couldn't be there in person for the wedding, which was nice.

This is another one of my favorite pictures.

The flowering trees are one of my favorite things about the gardens.  I love when they are in full bloom, so it was nice to be able to snag some pictures with them.

If I had to pick a favorite picture from the day, this one is probably it.  It looks like we're in an enchanted forest.

And one more picture with flowers.

We had Subway for dinner with Little Debbie Birthday Cakes for dessert.

One of our friendly neighborhood squirrels, Chip, decided to stop by for a treat.

A close up of Chip.

And that's it.  I hope you enjoyed this peek into our vow renewal.

While this wasn't the wedding I had envisioned when I first started wedding planning in 2019, it was actually preferable in a lot of ways.  The only thing I would have changed would have been the guest count.  I wish we could have had more friends and family members there to celebrate with us.  But everything else about the day was just right.

Is there anything else you want to know about our wedding and vow renewal?  The pandemic has made wedding planning even more challenging, so if there are any insights you'd like from my experiences, I'd be happy to share.  Drop your questions in the comments, and I'll address them if I can, either in a reply to your comment or in a follow up post.

Next week, we'll be switching gears completely and diving into Halloween season.  I'm close to having four months of spooky crafts planned out for you all (but not all of them made yet, of course), and I can't wait to share them with you.