You don’t have to be a celebrity to renew your wedding vows, as I told John Beattie on BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime show last night. (It’s the last item in the programme, so if you want to hear it, scroll to 56 minutes in).

You don’t have to go all the way to the Maldives like Jools and Jamie either, but ‘destination vow renewal ceremonies’ have been a thing for quite a few years now.

Only last Friday, I found myself conducting a ceremony for Sophie and Bruno, who came all the way from France to renew their vows after 27 years of marriage on a hilltop just around the corner from the Three Sisters of Glencoe. I will write about their story when the photos come in, but in the meantime, here’s the photo Sophie sent me from the day she told Bruno that was what she was planning..

As I wrote in my book, We Do! “A marriage is an agreement between two people who want to share their lives, and like all agreements, it can be open to renegotiation.”

Raising a family can test the strongest of partnerships and when the children fly the nest, it can leave a couple wondering what the future holds. 

Helen and Simon renewed their vows on the silver wedding anniversary. As they wrote: ‘our celebration today is the best way to share our past and our future, with family and friends, all of whom have played very important part in our lives. There have been some great times and have been some awful times. With this in mind, we decided that this significant wedding anniversary is a celebration of love, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies in every given year!'”