Dolly Parton to renew wedding vows

Dolly Parton and Carl Dean are to renew their wedding vows.

The 70-year-old country music star and her 73-year-old spouse are due to celebrate their 50th anniversary on May 30th and plan to celebrate the milestone by reaffirming their commitment to one another.

The couple wed in 1966 after two years of dating in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia, in front of just Dolly’s mother and the ‘Jolene’ singer – who released her debut album ‘Hello, I’m Dolly’ shortly after tying the knot – is planning for the vow renewal ceremony to be a much bigger event.

She told People magazine: "We’re going to get married again! I’ll have a beautiful wedding dress, ’cause I didn’t have a big, long wedding dress when we got married and we’ve got a suit for him, so we’re going to dress up and take a bunch of pictures."

Though Carl – a businessman who ran an asphalt-laying company – has stayed out of the spotlight throughout his wife’s career, rarely even appearing at her concerts, he is to go public with the vow renewal ceremony as Dolly is planning on selling the photographs from their special day

to raise funds for her literacy charity.

The ‘9 to 5’ hitmaker admitted her spouse prefers to live his life in private because he is a "loner".

She said: "My husband is a loner.

"He doesn’t particularly care about being around anybody but me. He’s just always asked me to leave him out of all this. He does not like all the hullabaloo."

However, Dolly has previously insisted Carl – who she met

at the Wishy Washy Laundromat when she moved to Nashville in 1964 – is incredibly supportive of her.

In a previous interview, she said: "He’s always been supportive. He’s like a brother and a father and a friend and a husband and a lover – all of those things to me. I think he’s kind of proud that we’ve been in it this long!"