Wedding vows

Teddy917 · August 2013

I'm helping a friend write her own vows. She is hoping on doing a funny but still serious type of thing. She also isn't much of a public speaker. So short and sweet but with some mild humor is what she's looking for. I have told her that only she will know exactly what to say but I told her I'd get some ideas.
So if you were to write your own vows with those guidelines, what would you write?

artbyallie · August 2013

The advice I always give is to remember that vows are promises. They aren't little stories about your relationship, or things you like about your partner, or things like that. They need to be primarily about what you are promising to your spouse. It's okay to be a little funny but they shouldn't be crude or impossible to keep.

SomethingBeautiful08 · August 2013

I would ask your friend what is important to her spouse-to-be? What are those 5 ish things that are really important to their marriage and then promise them? I think that the funny part can come in when there are more light hearted but no less serious items..for example for my Mt Dew loving DH I might think about including "I promise that I will never make you choose between me and Mt Dew". While that would be a bit of an inside joke but most of the guests are well aware of his Mt Dew love. I think it is ok if one or two phrases are an inside joke that most of the guests won't get but most of it should be clear, truthful and understandable.

mlg78 · August 2013

Our minister had us select five "vows" to promise to each other...and then we put them into our own words. We chose: honest, love, respect, "in good times and in bad" and trust. That way we promise the same things to each other while still having our own personalities shine through. She's better off writing something without humor first so she gets the serious stuff done and if she can add a laugh into it at that point, then great. We thought we'd do the same but now that ours are written, we're not adding any humor.

32daisies · August 2013

We wrote ours, and I went through a dozen versions before I was happy with mine. I know what you mean about humor, and it's nice to inject something light into all that serious emotion. I agree with what PP have said. I kept mine mostly straight, but put something "sweet" rather than "funny" to inject a smile or two.

I found it VERY hard, overall. I love my guy like crazy and I can't say enough wonderful things about him, but maybe it's because I think he's SO amazing, I feel like words can never be enough to tell him. So I talked about that, and then they wrote themselves. Tell your friend to just say what she thinks, and hopefully it will come out the same way.

allispain · August 2013

I wrote my own, and I threw a little humor in there because I knew it would help keep both of us from crying as I read them. I agree with PPs that making your vows be promises is one of the easier ways to do this - and to write your own vows in general. For example, I promised that I would tell him how much I love him each and every day, but that I would also show him my love through my actions. I also promised to put burgers on the menu for dinner at least once a month - anyone who knows DH knows his love of burgers, so this made people chuckle and gave me a non-emotional moment to recover before I kept reading.

I did put most of the humor towards the start, though, since I didn't want to say something meaningful and serious and then follow it with a laugh. So I kind of worked my way up from the less serious promises to the more serious/emotional ones.

phira · August 2013

I think that there are two ways to do vows, that can sort of be mixed together. There's the, "Here's what I love about you and our relationship" vows, and the, "Here's what I promise" vows. I don't think vows have to be the literal promise kind--it's about what people are comfortable with saying in front of people.

If your friend is shy about public speaking, promise-type vows might be easier for her.

crunchymamaof2 · August 2013

The Knot has a booked called "Vows and Traditions" or something to that effect and I found it super helpful. It has examples of funny, serious, and traditional vows and from there we picked pieces of the ones we liked and combined those, along with some of our own words, to make our vows. We both are saying the same vows though.

How we decided on them: I thought back to the beginning of our relationship and how things have progressed. I tried to focus on past, present, and future and went from there.

Ven&Radio · August 2013

artbyallie said:

The advice I always give is to remember that vows are promises. They aren't little stories about your relationship, or things you like about your partner, or things like that. They need to be primarily about what you are promising to your spouse. It's okay to be a little funny but they shouldn't be crude or impossible to keep.

I think this I good advice. I also like what @mlg78 is doing.

I've been working on writing our ceremony/vows. I started by doing a lot of reading online of other people's ceremonies and taking bits and pieces, and tweaking them for ours. We decided to do our vows question and answer style - the officiant will ask "do you promise x?" and we will answer "we do" in unison. This not only keeps the ceremony shorter (one set of vows) but it also minimizes how much FI and I have to say. We'll each say a couple sentences during the ring exchange.

Jen4948 · August 2013

A little humor is one thing, but don't overdo it. It 1) comes across as though you don't take your vows seriously and 2) too much insider humor that your guests don't understand is off-putting.

Wedding vows

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