15 Couples Renew Their Wedding Vows for Better or Worse

Women remarried men. Men remarried women. And men remarried men.

One couple headed back to the altar at the Burbank Church of Religious Science after 57 years of marriage. Another couple took out some insurance by renewing their vows just six weeks after they entered into wedded bliss.

Far from conventional in execution, but dedicated to the age-old tradition of love, the group ceremony a week ago gave 15 couples with more than 200 years of marriage behind them a chance to polish their vows and pledge their commitment with champagne drunk from pink plastic cups.

Some couples said they took part in the ceremony to put an end to their bickering. Others were making a political statement. A few just thought it would be a cool way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

And so these couples--young and old, richer and poorer, some in sickness and others in health, most in good times and a few in bad--came together to celebrate their unions.

Sound cornball? (Especially when you consider the pink and red cutouts of Cupid hanging from the reception-room ceiling?)

Somehow, it rose above all that.

The ceremony showed that Valentine’s Day can mean more than a heart-shaped box of nuts or a Hallmark card awash in pastel sentiments.

As the 15 couples from widely divergent backgrounds laughed and nodded and kissed and cried at the reverend’s primer course on marriage, one lesson became clear: Love is indeed a common denominator in a world of differences.

The Rev. Marlene Morris--who remarried her own husband while she was at it-- faced her flock of retread romantics:

“It is love that sees the beauty in humanity . . . All that is love cannot be contained in words.”

John Wagoner, 73, said he was more nervous renewing vows with his wife, Dorothy, than he was at his wedding 46 years ago. After all, Wagoner said, he had been looking for the perfect way to tell his wife that he loved her.

All morning long, he said, he relived the lifetime they have spent together--the two sons they raised and their three-year courtship by mail when he was stationed overseas during World War II.

“Everything hasn’t been a bed of roses,” John said, shaking his head slightly.

“But most of it has been,” his bride replied, squeezing his arm and tearing up again.

“In the Scripture, it says that love is patient and kind. . . . What we know is that love tries to be patient and love makes an attempt to be kind. It is not irritable . . . and it does not rejoice in wrong unless, of course, it says, ‘I told you so.’ ”

Brad and Rita Bailey said they wanted to renew their vows to give their 2-year-old marriage a fresh start. Faced with a new house and money problems, they have been fighting a lot, said Rita, 27.

“But we really do love each other,” she said quietly.

Her husband said the experience took him back to their first ceremony.

“It’s like, ‘OK, I remember why I did this,’ ” Brad, 37, said.

“Always stand together but never too close together. The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Gary and Cleo Lambrecht, who married 57 years ago, were eager to reveal the way they have cemented their marriage.

“The biggest thing is, and I’ll tell this to anybody, ‘Don’t always be together,’ ” Gary Lambrecht, 87, said. “ ‘Have a little breathing space.’ ”

Gary said he often came home from months on location as a movie key grip only to have Cleo, a food editor for a local newspaper, pick up her suitcase and say “So long” as she headed out on a traveling assignment.

“Six weeks for Sandy and Sharon and I find that thrilling. Not that I didn’t think it would last. Heavens, I put them together.”

Sharon Schell-Feldman, 50, and Sandy Feldman, 53, said they renewed their vows barely a month after marrying because they always try to do something special for Valentine’s Day.

You see, it was on Valentine’s Day seven years ago that Sharon dumped Sandy because he went to a King’s hockey game rather than plan a romantic rendezvous. The couple reunited several months later.

But Sandy said he has been paying for his Valentine’s faux pas ever since.

“Now, we try to make Valentine’s Day a romantic, special day,” the well-coached Sandy said. “I don’t even turn on a hockey game.”

“I now pronounce you once again partners in life, co-conspirators in love. What has been put together by God, no man has been able to tear asunder. And, as if you needed my permission, you may kiss your partners.”

For David Bruner, 27, and George Ziemer, 31, the ceremony on the eve of their first wedding anniversary was a chance to show once again that they belong together and that their love is as valid as that of any straight couple.

They were glad, they said, to see the number of different couples who joined together in the ceremony.

“I realized, in the grand scheme of things, people do the same thing,” David said.

“It is not just a right reserved for one group of people anymore,” George said.

“I now present the recommitted couples of 1993. Do whatever it takes to show the world that love is not an old idea.”