Vow renewal invitations: how the wording differs from a wedding

Structurally it is the same card: hosts, the invitation line, the date, the time, the place, what follows, and how to reply. There are six differences, and one of them is a line you are not allowed to use at all.

• The request line is gone — “requests the honour of your presence at the marriage of” has nothing to request — no marriage is taking place. It becomes “invite you to join them in celebrating”, or simply “invite you to the renewal of our vows”.
• The hosts are usually the couple themselves — not their parents. A renewal is a party a married couple throw, so their own names go at the top and replies come back to them. At a fortieth or fiftieth, the grown children take that slot instead.
• There is a number in it — the years. On a wedding invitation the date is the whole story; here the length of the marriage is, and guests want it in the first two lines.
• Gifts are not asked for — traditionally none at all. A registry link is the fastest way to make a renewal read as a second wedding, and the household it would furnish has existed for decades.
• Children can be in the host line — which is common here and rare on a wedding invitation, because at a renewal they are usually in the ceremony.
• Nobody is given away — no processional language, no “daughter of”, no “giving in marriage”. The couple walk in together, and the wording should not imply otherwise.

What stays identical is the register. A renewal can be as formal as any wedding — spelled-out dates, third-person voice, the lot — and formal wedding invitation wording is the right guide to that register, as long as you swap the request line for one of the two above. Envelopes follow the same rules too: how to address wedding invitations applies unchanged, because addressing does not know what is inside.

Here is the blank form, if the empty page is the problem:

Two places, and they do different jobs. In the host line, “together with Noah, Imani and Theo”, the children are co-hosting: it tells guests this is a family occasion and that the three of them will be part of it. In the body, “this time with three more people standing with us”, they are in the ceremony, and the line is the reason half your guests will be in tears by four o’clock.

Use first names only, in birth order, and no ages. Ages date the invitation and put a number on a child who did not ask for one. If there are stepchildren, either name everybody or name nobody — a host line that includes two of four children is the kind of thing that is still being discussed at Christmas.

Ask anybody old enough to be embarrassed. A ten-year-old who is happy to carry the rings may not want their name printed on ninety invitations, and the difference between those two things is obvious to them and easy to miss for you.

This is the clearest line between the two families of wording. A wedding invitation that named the couple’s children would be telling guests something about the couple; a renewal invitation that names them is telling guests who is in the ceremony. Which is why none of the six situations under the wedding wording guide has an example with a child in the host line, and two of the ten here name children in the wording itself.

The reason you are renewing decides the opening two lines, the gift line and how much you explain. The rest of the card is the same in all three.

A milestone anniversary. Lead with the number — “twenty-five years of marriage and the renewal of their wedding vows”. It is the occasion, it is what guests want to know, and it makes the invitation impossible to mistake for a wedding. This is also the version most likely to be hosted by the children, and the one where a formal register sits naturally. Examples one, two, three and ten. If no vows are being said and the day is purely a party, you want an anniversary party invitation instead — a ceremony time is what separates the two.

A renewal after a difficult period. Illness, a separation, a few years nobody wants to relive. Here the number of years is optional and the explanation is entirely yours to withhold. Two short sentences that acknowledge something happened, with no diagnosis and no dates, is a complete invitation — example five. The direct version, example six, is for a guest list who lived through it with you and would find a euphemism strange. If your list is split, send five to most people and six to the ones it is already true for. What you should not do is write half an explanation: it produces questions at the door, which is the one place you cannot answer them.

A renewal that follows an elopement or a register office. The marriage has already happened, and the invitation must say so in the past tense — “were married in Siena on 7 October 2025”. That single grammatical move tells guests there is nothing legal to witness, so nobody arrives expecting to sign a register or wondering whether the first ceremony counted. Keep the original date and place; they turn a vague announcement into a fact and save you the same conversation eleven times. What you must never write is “at the marriage of”, even when your family will call the day the wedding. Examples seven and eight.