After Sept. 11, More Couples Choose to Retie the Knot

In the Tunnel of Love, a kitschy, cherub-painted carport illuminated with hundreds of twinkling lights, Marla and Kevin Holden of Westchester, N.Y., exchange rings, repeat their marriage vows and softly begin to cry. It’s a special day for the couple, but it’s not their first marriage. The Holdens were married a year ago, but it’s been tough going, what with fertility treatments, a miscarriage and grieving with family and friends affected by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

“I think we’ve realized how fragile life is. We saw so much,” says Kevin Holden after the couple paid $20 for the drive-thru ceremony. “We want to symbolically move forward from this point.”

Most married couples never repeat their wedding vows--once is enough is the prevailing theory. Hokey, a waste of time and money, a desperate attempt to save a failing marriage defines many people’s way of thinking about it. OK, maybe hokey still applies, but could a recommitment of a couple’s love ever be a waste of time?

The Holdens, it turns out, may not be unusual. In fact, wedding chapel directors from Gatlinburg, Tenn., to Las Vegas describe an increase in vow renewals since Sept. 11, although no official statistics exist to confirm the trend because a license is not required for such a ceremony. But those in the business of marriage--from church officials to family therapists--agree the attacks have had a powerful effect on personal relationships.

“It was terrible to see so many people suddenly lose their partners,” said Diane Sollee, founder and director of Smartmarriages.com, a Web site that acts as a clearinghouse for information supporting healthy marriages. “A blow like this makes you realize who you really value, and couples are finding they want to celebrate their time together.”

Typically, say those in the field, couples who renew their vows are happily married people who never had the wedding they wanted or who felt duty-bound to marry quickly before heading to war or having a baby. There are also the sentimentalists who want to commemorate a milestone anniversary. But today more couples are choosing to celebrate their bond regardless of how long they’ve been together. People need marital rituals, says William J. Doherty, author of “Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart” (Guilford Press, 2001). We need rituals, he says, that express our commitment to one another, rituals that look beyond Valentine’s Day.

So instead of an annual exchange of chocolates and roses, the Holdens intend to renew their vows every year. Such a ritual, says Doherty, not only provides a couple with the opportunity to reflect on their relationship but reminds them that marriage is an ongoing work.

In December, on a remote stretch along the Maui coast, Marci Blaze and Steve Levine of Venice Beach stood before a Hawaiian kuhina, a female spiritual leader, and rededicated their lives to one another. “Our first wedding was in Hebrew, and I told my husband I wasn’t really sure what I had agreed to,” says Blaze. “Fifteen years ago, we were married by someone else. This time we wrote our own vows, and we really felt as though we married each other.”

Although the tropical setting is optional, renewals tend to be small, with the focus on the vows not the event, says Greg Godek, director of La Jolla-based Romance Research Institute, which holds workshops on putting the romance back in a marriage. For Godek, co-author of “1,001 Ways to Be Romantic” (Casablanca Press, 2001), there is a distinction between a renewal of vows and a second wedding, the latter usually attended by more than 20 guests with the emphasis on the party not the promise.

On Thursday, Valentine’s Day, in a simple ceremony on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building, Eileen and Charles Guigno will join their family, and, with the skyline of a changed world behind them, celebrate 35 years of marriage. They say they want to show their children and grandchildren the way it should be.

At the World Trade Center, the couple lost a nephew and a neighbor, both firemen who were killed trying to save others. “You kiss your loved ones goodbye in the morning, and you never know what is going to happen,” said Charles Guigno, who believes the vows become more powerful when they are spoken in front of the people who mean the most to you. “It strengthens the family bond.”

Recognizing that very need to strengthen the family, the Worldwide Marriage Encounter, a nonprofit Christian organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of marriage, successfully encouraged legislators across the country to designate the second Sunday in February as World Marriage Day. On Sunday, church communities from coast to coast honored the state of marriage with workshops, festivals and renewal ceremonies.

Pansy and Winston Greene are leaders in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter. Pansy was 16 and Winston 18 when they married against their parents’ wishes in downtown Los Angeles in 1956. It was a cold and functional ceremony performed by a justice of the peace, they say.

After 20 years together, they realized that they didn’t know how to talk to one another. To better their relationship, they attended a weekend marriage encounter where they learned the fundamentals of husband-wife communication. The weekend concluded with a renewal Mass.

Now married for 45 years, retired and living in Carson, the Greenes have been leading marriage encounters for more than two decades. At the end of each retreat, they renew their own vows. “I am always reminded of how much I love Pansy,” Winston Greene says.