---
title: 'Vow renewal invitations'
description: 'Send a vow renewal invitation as one link. Six designs, replies collected, nothing printed.'
source: 'https://envelope.love/vow-renewal-invitations'
occasion: 'Vow renewal'
price: '$100'
---

# Vow renewal invitations.

Ten years on, or forty. An invitation that says plainly what the day is, and gathers the replies while you get on with it.

This is the plain markdown copy of https://envelope.love/vow-renewal-invitations, published by Love Envelope for machine readers. The page itself carries the same words.

A vow renewal is the occasion where the invitation has the most explaining to do before anybody even reaches the date. A guest needs to know that this is not a wedding, that they were most likely at the first one, and what is expected of them this time.

That is a short paragraph rather than a line, which is exactly what an invitation on a page can hold and a printed card cannot without a second sheet tucked in behind it.

The rest of it is the easiest invitation of the four to write, because the reason for the day is already known to everybody reading it. You are not announcing anything. You are asking the people who were there to come back.

## What a renewal has to make clear.

Four things, and the first of them is the one every couple forgets to say out loud.

- **That it is a renewal.** Use the word in the first line. "Renewing our vows" stops a guest arriving with a wedding present, stops an aunt telephoning to check, and sets the tone of everything underneath it.
- **Who is hosting it.** Often the couple themselves, sometimes grown up children arranging it for their parents. Either reads warmly as long as the invitation says which, because that is who a guest will reply to.
- **The number of years.** If the day marks a particular anniversary, put the number at the top. It is the reason the room is full, and burying it in the last line wastes the best thing the invitation has to say.
- **What to do about presents.** You have had a home together for decades and you do not need a toaster. One line asking for nothing, or pointing at something worth giving to instead, is kinder than leaving fifty people to guess.

## One that works.

It says what the day is in the first three lines, which is the whole job.

> Twenty five years later
> Margaret and David Ellery
> are renewing their vows
> Saturday the sixth of June at three in the afternoon
> St Bride's, Milton Combe
> Lunch afterwards. No gifts, please, only your company.

## Six to choose from.

- **Atelier.** Ink set enormous down the middle, one pressed stem in the corner. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/atelier
- **Noir.** A hairline frame with the date cut into the rule. Parts down the middle. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/noir
- **Verdure.** Everything ranged left, foliage running the full right edge. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/verdure
- **Poster.** No flowers at all. Names the size of a headline, ranged hard left. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/poster
- **Arch.** A single arch holding your photograph, closing around it as it opens. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/arch
- **Horizon.** A band of solid colour over paper, names reversed out of the dark half. Live sample: https://envelope.love/i/horizon

## Guides for this occasion

- [Anniversary party invitation wording](https://envelope.love/blog/anniversary-party-invitation-wording.md): Wording for a fortieth, a sixtieth, one thrown by the children, and a quiet one for two. Including the line that gets the older guests to reply.
- [Vow renewal invitation wording](https://envelope.love/blog/vow-renewal-invitation-wording.md): You are not getting married, you are saying it again on purpose. Wording for ten years, twenty five, and the ones that follow something hard.
- [Invitation wording for a second marriage](https://envelope.love/blog/second-marriage-invitation-wording.md): Nothing about a second wedding needs to be smaller or quieter. The wording, the etiquette that no longer applies, and how to include children.
- [Registry office and civil ceremony wording](https://envelope.love/blog/civil-ceremony-invitation-wording.md): A room that holds twelve, a legal appointment, and a party for everybody else. How to word each part without anybody feeling ranked.
- [Milestone anniversary invitations, from the tenth to the fiftieth](https://envelope.love/blog/milestone-anniversary-invitations.md): Who hosts, what to call it, how to word an invitation for a couple rather than from them, and what changes at each decade.
- [Renewing your vows: how it actually works](https://envelope.love/blog/vow-renewal-planning.md): What a renewal is and is not, who to invite, what happens in the ceremony, and how the invitation differs from a wedding one.

## What it costs

$100 once. No subscription. No renewal. Nothing to cancel. Publishing is free for the first 24 hours, so the invitation can be live and looked at before anything is paid.

## Questions

- **What do you write on a vow renewal invitation?** Name the occasion first, then the two of you, then the date and the place. The line that matters most is the one saying it is a renewal, because everything a guest assumes afterwards follows from it.
- **Who should be invited to a vow renewal?** Whoever the day is genuinely for, which is usually a smaller and more deliberate list than the original wedding. Children and grandchildren who were not there the first time are the guests who tend to matter most.
- **How far ahead should a vow renewal invitation go out?** Six to eight weeks is right for something local, and longer if the family is spread across the country or has to book a night somewhere. A renewal rarely needs a save the date.
- **Do people bring gifts to a vow renewal?** They will if you do not say. Most couples ask for nothing, and a single warm line on the invitation is enough to settle it for everybody at once.

## Other occasions

- [Wedding invitations](https://envelope.love/wedding-invitations.md): Design a wedding invitation online and send it as one link. Six designs, replies collected, $100 once.
- [Engagement party invitations](https://envelope.love/engagement-party-invitations.md): Send an engagement party invitation as one link. Six designs, replies collected, nothing printed.
- [Anniversary invitations](https://envelope.love/anniversary-invitations.md): Send an anniversary party invitation as one link. Six designs, replies collected, nothing printed.

Start yours. Make an invitation: https://envelope.love/create