Customizing Vows

Knottie34559892

Any ideas on writing custom vows?

BlueBirdMB

Please make them actual vows/promises to one another and not a long, rambling love letter that should be read in private, not at a wedding ceremony.  One of my pet peeves.  

This isn't a time to discuss how much you love the person, it's a time to vow to love and how you are going to that in the future. 

We wrote our own together by looking at samples of other vows and discussing what was important to us.  Here are ours:

I, M, take you, D, to be my husband, my friend, my love, and my lifelong companion, loving what I know of you, and trusting what I do not yet know. I eagerly anticipate the chance to grow together, getting to know the man you will become, and falling in love a little more every day. I promise to share my life with you, to build our dreams together, to support you through times of trouble and to rejoice with you in times of happiness. I promise to treat you with respect, love, and loyalty through all the trials and triumphs of our lives together. This commitment is made in love, kept in faith, lived in hope, and made new everyday for the rest of our lives.  

Jen4948

Four other things:

1) Make sure they incorporate any legal requirements of your jurisdiction, such as a "Declaration of Intent," as well as any religious requirements of your faith if your ceremony is religious.

2) Keep them free of inside jokes that only you, your FI, and maybe a few other people there get. In fact, save humor for your reception. When it happens during the ceremony as the result of preplanning, it often falls flat and the couple comes off as immature and/or not taking the whole act of getting married seriously.

3) The only persons who should be involved in your vow exchange are you, your FI, and your officiant. No vows should be said by or to anyone else (e.g. a stepchild) because no one else is getting married at this ceremony unless you are having a double wedding.

4) Make actual promises to each other that you are capable of keeping.

mrpbn7

We each said the same thing (actually, the officiant read this - all we did was say, "I will" and then "we will" after the last prompt)

Separately: 

"Will you, _____ , keep ____ as your favorite person – to laugh with her, go on adventures with her, support her through life’s tough moments, be proud of her, grow old with her, and find new reasons to love her every day?"

Together: 

"Will you, ____ and ______, be each other’s partners from this day forward? Will you bring out the best in one another, share your happiest moments together, and love each other absolutely – for the rest of this lifetime and for whatever may come next?"

We wrote it all ourselves. You can see the rest of the ceremony here: http://loveparty2014.com/2014/09/09/full-ceremony/

[Deleted User]

I read various vows over the course of a few weeks, took a two-day break from it, and then wrote by hand in an inspiring location with a coffee for a few hours. The day after that, I cut and rearranged… I found that reading vows gave me some ideas in the back of my mind, but they still came from me and flowed because of my "writing session". 

xx802xx

mrpbn7 said:

We each said the same thing (actually, the officiant read this - all we did was say, "I will" and then "we will" after the last prompt)

Separately: 

"Will you, _____ , keep ____ as your favorite person – to laugh with her, go on adventures with her, support her through life’s tough moments, be proud of her, grow old with her, and find new reasons to love her every day?"

Together: 

"Will you, ____ and ______, be each other’s partners from this day forward? Will you bring out the best in one another, share your happiest moments together, and love each other absolutely – for the rest of this lifetime and for whatever may come next?"

We wrote it all ourselves. You can see the rest of the ceremony here: http://loveparty2014.com/2014/09/09/full-ceremony/

I love this idea. I've been debating how to read vows I write to my fiancé while crying uncontrollably (which will probably happen). If my fiancé and I write vows together that our officiant will read to us and we agree too, I might cry a little less and also won't have to embarrass myself by attempting to cry and read the vows myself in a choked up, sniffling and sobbing voice. Reading them myself would be more personal, but I'm not sure I can manage not crying while reading them.