  The firm understanding of standard quark-antiquark states (including excited
states) is necessary to search for non-conventional mesons with the same
quantum numbers. In this work, we study the phenomenology of two nonets of
excited vector mesons, which predominantly correspond to radially excited
vector mesons with quantum numbers $n$ $^{2S+1}L_{J}=2$ $^{3}S_{1}$ and to
orbitally excited vector mesons with quantum numbers $n$~ $^{2S+1}L_{J}=1$
$^{3}D_{1}$. We evaluate the decays of these mesons into two pseudoscalar
mesons and into a pseudoscalar and a ground-state vector meson by making use of
a relativistic quantum field theoretical model based on flavor symmetry.
Moreover, we also study the radiative decays into a photon and a pseudoscalar
meson by using vector meson dominance. We compare our results to the PDG and
comment on open issues concerning the corresponding measured resonances. Within
our approach, we are also able to make predictions for a not-yet discovered
$s\bar{s}$ state in the $n$ $^{2S+1}L_{J}=1$ $^{3}D_{1}$ nonet, which has a
mass of about 1.93 GeV. This resonance can be searched in the upcoming GlueX
and CLAS12 experiments which take place at the Jefferson Lab.
