One way to look at it: consider a couple who decides that they ultimately don’t work together, and consequently divorce, but who nevertheless do not regret getting or being married, considering that time a happy and valuable part of their lives. So they want to celebrate their anniversary, despite not being married anymore. Is this reasonable? I say yes, it is reasonable to celebrate the anniversary of an occasion you view very positively. So celebrate it.
If you really want to know how long you’ve been married, you need to add it up. For example, if you were married the first time for 17 years 46 days, and have since been married for 1 year 291 days, then you’ve been married for a total of 18 years 337 days. This means you have 1 year 28 days until you can celebrate 20 years as a married couple.
Or you can just do what the wife wants. Things will likely be much easier if you let her win this.
Seriously, you guys miraculously save your marriage, and yet now you feel compelled to be “right” about this topic where she is papering over your separation. If you are serious about wanting to be married (again) “Yes dear” are the only words that really need to be coming out of your mouth.
The fact that she wants to look at it as 20 unbroken years is actaully a wonderful gesture on her part. You’ve been given a gift and you are beating it to death with this pedantic game of “I’m right”. Look at the big picture and move on.
Its twenty years. The Missus said so. And incidentally how/why did she lose her title of Missus and how/why did she regain it.
Congrats BTW and apologies for be nosy.
You have been married for 3 years, 17 years and 20 years. You’ve now got three presents to buy your wife, better get busy.
Cosigned.
Yup yup. You’re celebrating the totality of your relationship: the wedding day (for, in this case, the first wedding) is used as the marker because it’s easy to place - but what’s celebrated is every happy moment you’ve ever had, and every happy moment you expect to have.
astro said it best, so I’ll just add my support for celebrating 20 years.
I’d celebrate 22 years, but that’s because I’m bad with math.
Really, should have sorted this in the same way as someone I used to know- got married on the same day of the year both times, and told everyone it was their second third anniversary…
You’ve been married 17 years, you have a 20th anniversary coming up. The two are different things.
Congratulations either way 
Hell, if we can celebrate Reagan’s 100th birthday when he’s not even living, you and your wife can celebrate the 20th anniversary of your first marriage.
Merriam Webster:
If what you are celebrating is an anniversary, then the 20th anniversary of your original marriage is in January. Since you’re together now, celebrate that.
If you want to celebrate 20 years of marriage, that comes later, but that’s a different issue.
And I agree with others: go along with what your wife wants. Quibbling about what to call a happy occasion is not the best way to ensure they’ll be more of them.
I agree with everyone else. But I want to point out an interesting variation from a couple I know. They believe the new marriage makes the divorce null and void, and they were married the entire time. Of course, I don’t think they dated anyone else, either.
Good luck amending those tax returns in those years they were divorced.
In situations like this, always ask yourself the following question: Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?
You’ve been married for exactly as long as your wife says you have been married.
“How long have you been married?” has a different answer from “What anniversary should you celebrate?”
You’ve been married the sum of the length of the two marriages.
You should celebrate the 20th anniversary of your first wedding AND the third anniversary of your second wedding. The two celebrations do not have to be comparable in scope.
If you’d had any foresight you would have gotten married for the second time on the anniversary of your first wedding – unless you like having two anniversaries, which seems kind of sweet to me but I understand is the sort of thing that annoys a lot of men.
It’s obvious that 3rd, 17th and 20th *all *have some sort of obvious logic. I’d be more on your side if somehow your wife employed some artifice like “remarriage years get a 3x multiplier effect, so really we’re celebrating our *25th *anniversary and I need that platinum BMW to show you care.”
If you want to be pedantic, then call it the 20th anniversary of your wedding in 1992. And in case you didn’t get the multiple messages above, the only time to not call this your 20th anniversary is 3 years and 17 years from now, when you can say “the first 20th anniversary was so great, I wanted to do it again.” 
To start this off, thanks for all of the posts. I appreciate the many viewpoints. Secondly, this was never a fight, or even an argument with us. Just something that we would talk about, and joke about, together and with friends.
Being happy is better than being right (most of the time). I was actually hoping to have more people on my “side”, but I understand the logic of letting her have her way.
I have made sure to remember both anniversaries as they are both special to me. I think that the second one means a little more because after two years apart we were able to put everything aside and come together.
As for best response? I give it to j66. (S)he was the first with the (right) answer. The missus gives it to grimpixie.