There is an egregious lack of later-in-life Anidala fluff and I've never written any either, so I decided to try my hand at it! I'm imagining the twins being mid-twenties here, which would make Anakin late forties and Padmé early fifties, roughly. I didn't calculate out any ages or "years-since-X-event"s precisely so forgive me if you notice any inconsistencies. Written for Anidala Week 2018 (prompt: canon divergence) on Tumblr!
It had all started when Leia asked about their wedding while brainstorming ideas for her and Han's. "It was incredibly romantic," Padmé said, so dreamily that Leia rolled her eyes. "It was at Varykino, on the balcony overlooking the lake, just the two of us…well, Artoo and Threepio were there too, Artoo took holovids for us and—"
"Just the two of you?" Leia repeated, looking surprised. "What about your families and friends?"
"Well, we were kind of trying to keep it a secret since I kind of was still a Jedi at the time and kind of wasn't allowed to get married," Anakin pointed out.
"Oh. True. But couldn't you at least tell your parents?"
Padmé shrugged. "We just didn't want to risk it." In truth, she suspected Shmi had always known (her son's "friend" paying for her and the Lars family to move to a beautiful country house on Naboo may have tipped her off). The Naberries, on the other hand, had been baffled and less than pleased when she and Anakin finally confessed the truth to them shortly after he'd left the Jedi Order and they were preparing to make their marriage public—though thankfully the twins were already on the way and Padmé's family eagerly abandoned their annoyance when they heard that bit of news.
Leia narrowed her eyes. "How would you feel if I eloped secretly without inviting you?"
"I—well—it's a totally different situation," Anakin spluttered, looking horrified at the thought.
"Mm-hmm," Leia said dubiously. She typed out a few notes on her holopad. Padmé hoped she'd inspired her daughter to consider Naboo as a wedding location; Leia had inherited Anakin's stubbornness (well, hers too) and Padmé knew that telling her outright she ought to get married on Naboo would only make her more determined not to do that.
"Don't you ever wish you'd had a real wedding?" Leia asked a moment later. "Han and I have been debating whether or not it's even worth all the hassle, but I'm worried I'll regret it later if we don't do it properly."
Padmé blinked. She didn't think she'd ever considered the thought. Everything had been so chaotic with the war and their secret marriage, and then by the time the war was over and their marriage was out in the open Luke and Leia were born, and between them and the Senate Padmé had been too busy and content to think about doing the wedding differently if they could have.
"I…I don't know," she said at last. She looked at Anakin and he shrugged, seeming just as surprised by the question.
"Not especially," he said. "We've been so happy."
"But we still think you should do a proper wedding since you have the opportunity," Padmé added hastily, and Leia rolled her eyes again.
To Padmé and Anakin's joy, Leia and Han did indeed end up doing a proper wedding. Padmé was initially disappointed it wasn't on Naboo, but Alderaan was so beautiful that she quickly changed her mind. Bail and Breha, with whom Leia had always had a special bond, even offered to host the wedding in their palace. Everything was perfect, even though Padmé and Anakin did cry buckets all day.
"Would you go back and change our wedding?" Anakin asked abruptly several hours later while they were swaying together to a slow song during the reception.
Padmé had been resting her head contentedly on his chest, but now she lifted it to look at him in surprise. "Would you?" she said.
"I don't know. It was perfect, of course it was, but at the same time…this is nice," he confessed, waving a hand around the room. "Celebrating your love with all your other loved ones at your side instead of keeping it hidden like—like it's a secret to be ashamed of."
"We weren't ashamed," Padmé reminded him softly. "But I understand what you mean. It is nice."
Anakin looked down at her, biting his lip. Then he said, "Marry me again."
"What?" Padmé said, thinking for a second that she'd misheard.
"We can do something like this," Anakin said, looking nervous in a way she hadn't seen him around her since the earliest days of their relationship. "A party with all our family and our friends. Maybe back on Naboo by the lake, just like last time. I know our parents never quite got over not going to our wedding, so…better late than never, right?"
As she gazed at him and considered the proposal, Padmé felt her heart swell with joy. Renewing their vows wasn't something she'd thought about before, but now that Anakin was suggesting it, she realized how perfect it would be. Leia's comment from months ago had been getting to her; imagining how hurt she'd be if her daughter eloped without inviting her was making Padmé see with new eyes how much she truly must've upset her parents. Besides, as happy as she had been on her wedding day, part of her had felt a little incomplete without her family there.
"Yes," she said, beaming at him and feeling a few tears welling up. "Yes, let's get married again."
Anakin beamed back and they stopped dancing altogether as he leaned in to kiss her senseless in the middle of the dance floor, though excessive public displays of affection on their part were so common that most of the guests hardly seemed to be paying them any attention.
"So you're…getting remarried?" Luke said, looking confused.
"Not remarried, renewing our vows," Padmé corrected. "We can't get remarried if we never stopped being married in the first place."
"Okay, renewing your vows. Why?"
"We just thought it would be nice," Anakin said.
"And I think it would be nice to take a yearlong vacation from the Senate and go somewhere tropical, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it," Leia muttered.
"Oh, hush," Padmé said mildly. "Dad and I have been married almost thirty years and raised two children, I think we deserve a second wedding and honeymoon if we want one. It's about time we got to relax."
"If you just want a vacation—"
"It's not about the honeymoon," Anakin interrupted. "Though I am looking forward to it." He grinned at Padmé, which made her giggle and the twins gag loudly.
"Stop being gross," Luke whined.
"Anyway, it's not about the honeymoon, it's about reaffirming our love and commitment to each other after so many years together," Padmé said.
"Why do you need to do that?"
"We don't need to, but we want to. It feels right."
"You're only doing this to steal my thunder," Leia grumbled.
"We're thinking of waiting a while precisely because of that. Of course we don't want to overshadow your wedding," Padmé soothed her. Not to mention that she needed at least six months to recover before laying her eyes on any more wedding planning HoloNet sites.
"But it was your wedding that gave us the idea," Anakin added. "It was such a special day for us too, seeing you get married. And we realized our parents missed out on that experience with us, so we decided to give them the chance to have it now. They won't be around forever."
Luke and Leia sobered up at that; indeed, Cliegg Lars had already passed away several years ago, and Shmi and Padmé's parents were in their eighties. "So what exactly happens at remarriage ceremonies?" Luke said. Padmé shook her head in exasperation but didn't bother correcting him again. "Will it be as big of an ordeal to plan as Leia's?"
"You barely even helped!"
"Definitely not," Padmé hastened to assure him. "We'll gather family and friends at Varykino for a fairly informal ceremony, and then we'll have some food and drinks and dancing, and that's it."
"It'll be a breeze to plan," said Anakin.
"Famous last words," Leia said sagely. "What are you going to wear?"
Anakin shrugged with the same carelessness about fashion that had led him to show up to their original wedding in worn old Jedi robes. "I was thinking of wearing my wedding dress again," Padmé said. "I've always thought it was a shame I only got to wear it once."
"It was beautiful," Anakin agreed.
"It still fits?" Luke said, looking surprised. At Padmé's indignant huff and Anakin's warning headshake, he hastily added, "Well, I just mean, thirty years is an awfully long time."
"Of course it still fits," Padmé said stubbornly, though in all honesty she wasn't entirely sure it would.
A few days later, Luke and Leia were back at their own Coruscant apartments and Anakin was at his weekly sparring session with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, so Padmé had the Amidala-Skywalker apartment all to herself. She decided to take the opportunity to try on her wedding dress, something she hadn't done in many years. Occasionally during the war when Anakin had been gone for months with no contact and she was missing him especially badly, she'd slip into her wedding dress as a way to take herself back to that happiest day and feel closer to him, but once the war had ended and he'd left the Order and been home with her every day, that was no longer necessary.
It was still hanging in its special spot far back in Padmé's giant closet; she was suddenly glad she'd chosen to leave it in their main home on Coruscant instead of the one on Naboo they only spent a few months of the year at. She gently lifted it off the hanger and carried it back out into the bedroom. After laying it down on the bed, she lightly ran her hand over the fabric, smiling as she once again recalled her and Anakin's wedding day.
Padmé stripped off her gown and picked up the wedding dress. She sized it up, then decided it would be safest to go in feet first, fearing she might rip it if it got stuck on her shoulders. All was well at first, but then she started pulling it up over her hips and discovered that it wouldn't go any further.
Frowning, Padmé tugged and tugged but couldn't make the dress budge. She stepped out of it and tried putting it on headfirst, but got stuck that way too. She went back to feet first, and again managed to get the dress only halfway up. "No," she whispered, feeling tears sting her eyes.
By the time she finally gave up completely, she was flustered and frustrated and red-faced and about to cry. Padmé sat down on the bed with a thump, still half-wearing the dress, and buried her face in her hands, trying to suppress a sob.
It was at that moment that she heard Anakin's voice calling that he was home. Padmé quickly straightened up, determined to hide all the evidence and later pretend that she'd simply changed her mind about wearing the dress to the renewal ceremony. The thought of admitting to him that she no longer fit into her wedding dress was too embarrassing.
But she wasn't quick enough: only moments later, Anakin was pushing the door open and coming in. He stopped short as he beheld the scene. "What are you up to?" he asked.
"Nothing," Padmé said with as much dignity as she could muster.
Anakin came closer, looking concerned, and he reached out to gently wipe a tear off her cheek. "What's wrong?"
Padmé sniffled. "My wedding dress doesn't fit anymore," she said, feeling a few more tears leak out.
"So?"
"So?" she repeated incredulously. "So, my wedding dress doesn't fit because I'm old and fat and ugly—"
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Anakin said, not unkindly. "You're stunning. Every day for the past thirty years, I've woken up to find you're more beautiful than you were the day before."
Padmé snorted loudly. "If you're going to try to tell me I'm more beautiful now than I was at age twenty-four—"
"You are to me," Anakin insisted. "And I know tomorrow you'll be even more beautiful than you are today."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."
Padmé wandered over to the mirror, Anakin following, and gestured at herself. "Look at me," she said. "My hair's turning gray—"
"Only a little, and it makes you look wise and distinguished."
"I have wrinkles."
"So do I. Who cares?" Anakin slid his arms around her waist, hugging her from behind, and bent down to kiss the wrinkles next to her left eye, then her right. "Besides, they're laughter lines. Signs of a good life," he said. "Padmé, you are the most beautiful being in the whole galaxy. Remember when we first met and I thought you must be one of the angels from Iego that I'd heard about in stories? Well, now I've been to Iego and I've seen the real angels, and I can tell you with confidence that they don't compare to you."
Now Padmé's eyes were welling up again, but with happy tears. What had she done to deserve such a wonderful husband? A husband who still found her attractive after almost three decades of marriage? "I love you," she said.
"I love you too. Gray hair and wrinkles and all."
"But I still don't fit into my wedding dress. I—I really wanted to wear it to the vow renewal ceremony."
Anakin kissed her again, on the cheek this time. "I know. But now you can get a brand-new dress to go along with the brand-new memories we'll be creating," he suggested. "Maybe you can have your parents and your sister help you pick it out since they couldn't last time, and the twins too, I'm sure they'd all love to."
Padmé's heart lifted at the thought. "That's a good idea," she said. "It's the twins' fault my hips are too wide for this dress, the least they can do is help me pick out a new one."
Anakin laughed. "I love your hips."
"I should hope so. They were ruined to give you children."
"Improved."
"Oh, please. I used to be so thin and small, and now—"
"Now you have curves," Anakin said, running his hands along her wider hips and the stomach that wasn't as trim as it had been in her younger days. He smirked a little. "Very sexy curves."
Padmé rolled her eyes. "Now you're definitely lying to make me feel better."
"I promise I'm not."
"Prove it, then."
"Oh, I will."
And he did, for the rest of the afternoon.
"I can't believe it," Padmé whispered. "I can't believe we're grandparents."
"I know," Anakin said, also whispering so as not to wake the baby currently napping in his arms. "When did we get old?"
Padmé chuckled and rested her head on his shoulder, smiling as she watched Ben's arm flail in his sleep. "It feels like just yesterday it was Luke and Leia we were holding," she said wistfully. "Were they really ever this tiny?"
"Tinier, even," Anakin said. "Twins usually are."
"That's true."
They fell into silence for a while and watched their grandson sleep, overwhelmed with awe and joy and pride. News of Leia's pregnancy had arrived not long after the wedding, and Anakin and Padmé had temporarily put their vow renewal plans on hold. Leia had suggested they wait until she and Han had more free time after the baby was born so that she could still help them with planning ("We'll be waiting twenty years, then!" Padmé said while Anakin laughed hysterically). Nevertheless they'd agreed that putting it off would be best, seeing as the timeframe they'd originally been considering was too close to Leia's due date, and doing it sooner would be too rushed.
Eventually Ben woke up again with a little yawn that melted Padmé's heart, and he blinked up at them. "He has Leia's eyes. Your eyes," Anakin said proudly.
"You've said that a dozen times today," Padmé said, though she didn't think she'd ever get tired of hearing it. "I wonder how long they'll let us borrow him." Leia and Han were currently passed out in their bedroom next door, and Anakin and Padmé had been all too eager to accept baby duty.
"Probably a long time. They'll be out cold until one of us goes in and physically shakes them awake, if I remember correctly."
"Good. I don't want to give him back."
"Me neither. Let's steal him."
Padmé laughed again. "You know," she said after a moment, "before he was born…I had reservations about being a grandmother. Thinking of myself as a grandparent seemed like the equivalent of thinking of myself as well and truly old. But now that he's here, I'm as happy to have become a grandmother as I was the day I became a mother."
Anakin smiled and turned slightly to press a kiss to the top of her head. "I know what you mean," he said. "That day when you were trying on your wedding dress, I was dismissive of you being upset about being old, but when Leia told us a few weeks later we were going to be grandparents…well, I certainly had a moment where I was forced to confront my age too. Now those worries seem ridiculous, don't they?"
Padmé hummed in agreement. "Really, we're in a great time of life right now," she mused. "Our children are grown, so we have time and the house to ourselves again, but they still live close by so we see them whenever we want. And now we have a grandson whom we can spoil rotten and relive all the fun parts of early parenthood with, but we can just hand him off to his parents when he starts crying or needs a diaper change."
"You make some excellent points," Anakin said, grinning. "Speaking of having time to ourselves, I can hardly wait 'til you retire from the Senate and we can travel the galaxy together."
"Okay, now you're getting ahead of yourself. I'm not that old yet."
"We're already married, I don't know why I'm so nervous," Padmé said, anxiously smoothing out her dress and hair for the thousandth time.
"Neither do I. Stop touching your hair, you'll ruin it," Leia ordered, but she was smiling. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure Dad's even more of a nervous wreck."
Padmé laughed, remembering their first wedding day when she'd been concerned Anakin might actually pass out. Though really that had been more during the wedding night than the actual ceremony, a detail which she felt Leia definitely wouldn't appreciate hearing. "That's probably true."
They were waiting in a room of Varykino just off the balcony where the ceremony was being held. Leia (and Ben) were helping Padmé get ready whereas Luke had gone to help Anakin, fearing that a combination of nerves and fashion incompetence would lead him to somehow ruin the outfit the twins had reportedly picked out for him. Padmé couldn't discount the possibility.
Ben, who was now six months old and nestled comfortably in Leia's arms, reached his chubby little hands out towards Padmé and gurgled happily. "That's right, go tell Grandma how silly she's being," Leia cooed, passing him over.
Padmé took him and planted a kiss on his cheek, making him giggle. "You are cuter and cuter every time I see you," she told him, giving him another kiss. "And you look just like your mom did when she was a baby."
"Really? I think he looks like Han."
"Yes, and I always swore you and Luke both looked like Dad while he said you looked like me. You need an unbiased outsider's perspective."
"Or maybe you're also biased because you want him to look like your side of the family."
Padmé chuckled. "Fair enough."
Just then, Ahsoka poked her head into the room. "We're ready for you," she said, and then she gasped. "Padmé, you look so beautiful."
"Thank you," Padmé said, smiling as she checked her reflection in the mirror one last time. She had to admit, the new dress she'd had made was gorgeous and perfect for the occasion (and much more in keeping with current styles than the one from thirty years ago). And the flowy fabric, the pale pinkish color had reminded her straightaway of the dress she'd been wearing when Anakin had kissed her for the first time right here on the balcony. She hoped he would notice the association too, though until now the dress had been kept strictly secret from him in a separate compartment of her closet which he was not to open under penalty of death.
Leia took Ben back from Padmé, then shifted him onto her hip so that she could give her a one-armed hug. "We'll see you in a minute," she said. "Stop worrying. Everything will be perfect."
Padmé nodded and waved bye-bye to Ben as they departed, and then she was alone. Suddenly, she was brought back to this moment almost thirty years earlier, standing in this very room and trying to collect herself before joining Anakin and the Nabooian holy man out on the balcony. Asking herself for the hundredth time if she was being too impulsive, if she was making a mistake by marrying a Jedi in secret at the outbreak of a war. Wondering if she was giving up her chance to have the peaceful life and normal family she'd always dreamed of. Remembering the way she felt every time she looked into Anakin's eyes and knowing she would never love anyone else the way she loved him.
Now, although that last feeling still held true, everything else could hardly be more different. Anakin and an officiant (though a different one) were still waiting for her outside, but this time they were accompanied by dozens of other people, all of Padmé's loved ones, all the people she'd missed during the first ceremony and the ones who hadn't been born yet. She had gotten the family she'd dreamed of in the end, and now she was about to celebrate her and Anakin's love surrounded by their children and grandson and son-in-law and parents and sister and nieces and friends.
Padmé broke out into a smile, the last of her nerves dissipating. She felt none of the trepidation that had clouded her happiness on her first wedding day, only the joy and excitement and love. She approached the window and pulled the curtain aside to peek out. Leia and Ben had taken their place standing up at the front with Luke and Anakin and the officiant. It was Padmé's turn now.
She took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped outside.
The guests all rose to their feet, smiling at her. Padmé beamed back, making eye contact with her parents in the front row, with her sister Sola and her family, with Han, Shmi Skywalker, Owen and Beru Lars, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Bail and Breha, Mon Mothma, Satine Kryze, Sabé and the rest of the current and former handmaidens, all the other friends who had made the trip to Naboo to celebrate with them. Even R2D2 and C3PO were there, standing in almost the same spots they'd occupied last time.
Padmé looked down towards the lake and smiled at Luke and Leia and Ben standing by the edge of the balcony, waiting for her. And then she looked at Anakin, and she forgot that anyone else in the galaxy existed. He was breathtakingly handsome in, not Jedi robes, but an elegant blue tunic. Padmé felt tears spring to her eyes as he smiled at her so brightly, the same smile she'd fallen in love with all those years ago. Not the nervous smile of their first wedding day, but a smile of confidence and unbridled joy.
Anakin took her hands when she reached him. Padmé remembered being startled by his new cybernetic hand thirty years before—their wedding was the first time he'd let her touch it—but now holding Anakin's two different hands felt as natural as breathing.
"Are you an angel?" he whispered, softly enough for only her to hear.
Padmé laughed (and cried a bit) as she remembered the little slave boy she'd met in a junk shop on Tatooine. She didn't say anything in response, couldn't possibly put the strength of her love for him into words at the moment, but she knew he could feel it in the Force. She had never needed words to communicate with him.
Given that they were already married and there was therefore no legal jargon to get through this time, the ceremony passed much more quickly than their actual marriage ceremony had. Padmé and Anakin recited vows they'd composed themselves, celebrating the past thirty years of their marriage and re-promising love and commitment for all the years to come, and then the officiant was declaring them—still—husband and wife, and Anakin was leaning down and kissing her.
Padmé kissed him back, smiling against his mouth as she heard all the guests applauding and cheering. How different it was from the first time, with only Threepio and Artoo in attendance, neither of whom could applaud (well, Threepio had tried because he insisted it was proper protocol to applaud at the conclusion of a human wedding).
The ensuing festivities lasted well into the night. At sunset, Anakin and Padmé managed to sneak away from everyone else, onto the more private balcony attached to the bedroom they would be (not) sleeping in that night. Anakin wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her towards him for a kiss. "Have I told you how beautiful you look today?" he murmured.
"Once or twice," Padmé teased.
"Your dress…" he began. "It reminds me of the one you wore when we had our first kiss."
She smiled broadly. "That was the idea," she said, extracting herself from his arms and twirling around to show off the dress more fully. "That day feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?"
"It does," Anakin agreed. "But at the same time, it feels like no time has passed at all."
Padmé went back to rest her forearms on the balcony and look out over the lake. Anakin joined her. "I still think you knew exactly what you were doing," he said with a snicker, "wearing a completely backless dress to an isolated lake retreat where nobody would see you except the nineteen-year-old Jedi who was obviously in love with you."
She laughed out loud. "I swear, I wasn't doing it consciously," she said. "But if I'd started noticing how warm and flustered I felt when you looked at me and subconsciously putting extra effort into my appearance when I knew I was going to see you…well."
Anakin laughed too and put his arm around her as they gazed out at the sunset. "I'm looking forward to a much better wedding night this time, now that we actually know what we're doing," Padmé joked a few minutes later.
"It was still romantic," Anakin protested, though he was also wearing a self-deprecating grin.
"Yes, it was. Probably because neither of us knew enough to realize that we had no idea what we were doing."
Both of them were laughing again. "You might be right about that," he admitted. "Well, tonight I plan to show you every single one of the things I've learned in the bedroom over the past thirty years."
"Really? Every single one?"
"Mm-hmm. Every—" He pressed a kiss to her ear "—single—" now to her cheek "—one." And finally her lips.
Padmé hummed appreciatively into his mouth. "Do you think anyone would mind if we got started on that right now instead of returning to the party?"
"I'm sure they're all too drunk to notice we're gone," Anakin said, taking her hand and tugging her back towards the bedroom.
Much later, they were lying tangled together in bed with the light of Naboo's moons streaming in through the curtains. "How far we've come," Padmé said, absentmindedly tracing patterns on his skin while he stroked her hair. "In every way, I mean, not just in bed."
"I know. It's crazy to think of how things were before…We had no idea when we'd be able to reveal our marriage. If we'd be able to," Anakin said. "We weren't even sure we'd ever be able to have a family together. I remember I wanted so badly to have a baby with you, but I always thought it was impossible."
"After the war, we'd always say," Padmé recalled. "After the war, you'd leave the Order and we'd reveal our marriage and then we could get started on making the family we both always wanted."
"That's basically what happened. The twins', ah, unexpected arrival just sped the process up a little bit." Anakin had left the Order at once upon discovering Padmé's pregnancy, and it was just luck—or perhaps the will of the Force—that the war ended not long afterwards.
A reflective silence fell for a few minutes. "We've lived, haven't we?" Padmé said softly.
"We have." Anakin kissed her then, gentle and sweet. "To the happiest thirty years of my life, and to the next thirty being even better."
Padmé snuggled in closer to his warmth, certain she had never felt so content. "I love you, Ani."
"I love you too."
Rolls-up-to-his-own-wedding-in-unwashed-Jedi-robes Anakin being relentlessly mocked by his only-wears-galactic-haute-couture family is my new favorite headcanon. Also, I feel like at this point in my Star Wars career my brain has rejected all the tragedies of canon so hard that I can't even comprehend the idea of this fic /not/ being 100% canon and true oh god