Writing your own vows

LauraD2015 · March 2014

What was the hardest part about writing your own vows? Did you and your fiancé write them together or separately?

artbyallie · March 2014

The hardest part of mine was keeping to the meter since we wrote sonnets. His was rhymed iambic pentameter (he has a Master's degree in writing poetry) and mine was blank verse because rhyming is hard. But I would advise not doing that if you haven't written poetry before.

We wrote ours separately. The thing I would advise keeping in mind is that vows are promises. I hate when couples 'write their own vows' and then it's just a rambling story about how they met and how they're perfect together or whatever. Or jokey promises like "I vow to make pancakes every Sunday." It's a serious, binding commitment and should read as such. The classic 'in sickness and in health' vow is classic for a reason.

mlg78 · March 2014

The hardest part was getting my husband to finish his! He procrastinates...

I like the way we did it... We chose 5 things to promise to one another: to love, to respect, "in good times and in bad", to trust and to be faithful. We then took each of those and put them in our own words and our own order. There were a couple sentences in the beginning that were just me professing my love for him and our relationship and then I started in on my promises. I think what most people forget is that you need to say things like "I promise"..."I vow"..."I will". They instead try to write a love note or something instead and that results in no promises.

MollyandD · March 2014

mlg78 said:

The hardest part was getting my husband to finish his! He procrastinates... I like the way we did it... We chose 5 things to promise to one another: to love, to respect, "in good times and in bad", to trust and to be faithful. We then took each of those and put them in our own words and our own order. There were a couple sentences in the beginning that were just me professing my love for him and our relationship and then I started in on my promises. I think what most people forget is that you need to say things like "I promise"..."I vow"..."I will". They instead try to write a love note or something instead and that results in no promises.

I think this idea is really adorable. My fiancé and I are not writing our vows or saying anything other than "I do," but if we were, I'd copy your idea.

mlg78 · March 2014

Molly&Domenic said:

mlg78 said:

The hardest part was getting my husband to finish his! He procrastinates... I like the way we did it... We chose 5 things to promise to one another: to love, to respect, "in good times and in bad", to trust and to be faithful. We then took each of those and put them in our own words and our own order. There were a couple sentences in the beginning that were just me professing my love for him and our relationship and then I started in on my promises. I think what most people forget is that you need to say things like "I promise"..."I vow"..."I will". They instead try to write a love note or something instead and that results in no promises.

I think this idea is really adorable. My fiancé and I are not writing our vows or saying anything other than "I do," but if we were, I'd copy your idea.

Thanks! Our minister came up with it. He wanted us to promise the same things to one another so one doesn't have a leg up on the other. It all goes back to when women had to obey... He wasn't cool with that so he wanted to have us promise the same while putting it in our own words which totally worked for us.

jenna8984 · March 2014

@mlg78 That is a really good idea. We plan to write our own but we have no idea how to tackle it. We thought about maybe writing them together and saying the same think to one another but I kind of like the aspect of it being a "secret" and not hearing his until the wedding. But we don't to just do our own thing and hav them be completely different lengths with completely different topics. We have heard people sending them to the JP first to review and then she tells you "you need to include this, you need to make your longer" but we don't have a JP. (Our old roommate and friend is officiating and she has no experience with that, she's just going to read a script that we google).

mc123mc · April 2014

We are also doing 5 promises to each other. We talked about the things we wanted to get across most, for me it was respect and appreciation for who he is today and will become, support of his goals and our goals as partners, a promise to maintain a happy and positive as well as adventurous life together. His was respect, honesty and encouragement, being his best self for us, and being supportive and positive.

We then each added a funny vow in there to bring some levity to the ceremony. And we are also both total jokesters so a super solemn vow ceremony just isn't us!

We wrote them out separately but then let each other read them so that we were totally off base.

When we exchange rings we are doing the regular : for better or worse in sickness in health deal, so we get both the personal and the traditional.

thenewmrsq · May 2014

My fiance and I are singing our vows to each other. Music is a very important part of our life, and we are sharing before the ceremony. So far, I think the hardest part is finding a way to put into words what we want to promise each other for the rest of our lives. I want to promise him everything, and I want to make it more personal than the traditional lines, but I can't very well blabber on for a half hour!

I do agree with PP ... if you write your own vows, keep in mind that they are meant to be promises. You can, of course, say what ever you want ... just my humble opinion!

ktgirlf21 · May 2014

We are planning on writing our own vows, but I still like the traditional wedding vows too. Has anyone heard of doing both? My fiancé and I giving our written ones then the priest doing the traditional repeat after me vows. Too redundant?

ab6704a · May 2014

@ktgirlf21 - are you being married by a Roman Catholic priest? If so, you may not be able to write your own vows, although I know some RC priests are more lenient about the couple including their own words within the ceremony.

If that's not an issue and you are able to write and speak your own vows you could do that and then have your priest transition to the formal ones. Or, if you are worried about it being redundant, maybe use your personal vows for the exchange of vows and then use traditional ring exchange vows for the ring exchange and then you get a little of both worlds.

Writing your own vows

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