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What's With Celebs Renewing Vows All the Time?

Mon., May. 10, 2010 5:22 PM PDT by Leslie Gornstein

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Tori and Dean, Heidi and Seal, Mariah and Nick—must every married celeb couple renew their vows every 10 minutes?
—Caleb, Ontario, via the Answer B!tch inbox

Look, man. When the average Hollywood marriage lasts exactly five minutes, making it all the way to 10 is something worthy of modest celebration—if not renting out the west coast of Mexico and ordering all of your guests to arrive in custom Vera Wang before the armored truck get there with your fresh haul of love-refreshing diamonds.

(Nick Cannon said of his most recent vow swap with wife Mariah Carey, "You've gotta be really creative. You've gotta get another ring.")

My point is this:

Celebrity vow renewal, which usually happens once a year, is all about extravagance. I have it on good authority that stars spend roughly the same amount of cash—or rake in the same dollar value worth of freebies—on vow renewal as they do for their weddings. As for exactly why, well, if you think I'm about to get very cynical, you're right.

I punt now to Harmony Walton, who runs the Bridal Bar and, let's just say, knows a thing or three about the celebrity wedding world.

She's helped plan a lot of them. Big ones.

"The wedding business has become a marketing tool for famous people," she says of the celebrity vow renewal trend. "Renewing vows extends their fame. If you're a star, once that wedding is over, and you're not going to have kids right away, well, this puts people in the forefront every year."

Vow renewal also works on a different public relations level, Walton points out, especially when the tabloids are speculating that a divorce is imminent.

"It's a quick and dirty way to say, look, we're happy," she says.

Lastly—and less cynically—there's the oh-my-God factor, as in, Oh my God, I'm still married to you, let's break out the Cîroc.

"Hollywood is synonymous with breakups," celeb relationship expert Dr. Gilda Carle explains to me.

"The people who have relationships that are standing for longer than a nanosecond want to celebrate that."

Indeed. And we here at E! Online will always be there to report on those vow renewals, and keep a couple's fame, I mean, love, alive.

Follow @answerbitch on Twitter.

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PHOTOS: Actual celebrity weddings!