Vows? Custom, or Old-School?

MeganStates

Will you be writing your own vows, or reciting the traditional standby? And if you are writing your own, will you read them from a card or have them memorized?

We are writing our own (nothing too serious, we're keeping it light). I'd prefer to memorize them, but I'm not going to lie; I'm a little terrified that the moment will be overwhelming and I'll forget!

WonderRed

We wrote our own repeat after me vows.   Our celebrant recommended we do it this way so that no one had to read off a piece of paper at the ceremony, no one forgot them, and we could say them quietly to each other while he said them loudly enough for everyone else to hear.

jenfromjersey

We are having a traditional Jewish ceremony which doesn't really have vows in the traditional sense as most would think of them. He will repeat a few lines in Hebrew and then I will say my line (repeating after the Rabbi).

mommapizano

Like PP we are having a religious ceremony which doesn't allow for anything to really be custom. But I love when people write their own vows. I just don't think I could get through custom vows without seriously crying. 

MeganStates

mrspizanotobe said:

Like PP we are having a religious ceremony which doesn't allow for anything to really be custom. But I love when people write their own vows. I just don't think I could get through custom vows without seriously crying. 

I am pretty worried about the crying aspect too; I'm hoping making them a little sillier will help combat that. Fingers crossed!

WonderRed

I wanted to add that at my first wedding I said my vows in Croatian because that's where my XH is from.   I memorized them and during the ceremony I was so nervous about and focused on not forgetting them that it made it hard to enjoy being in the moment.  And when I was saying them it felt like I was just taking a test and trying to get through it correctly instead of speaking from the heart.   Even though his family deeply loved and appreciated the thought and surprise of doing them that way, I've always regretted it.   If I was writing my own, non repeated vows I wouldn't worry about memorizing them. I would either use a note card or  just be prepared to be ok with ad libing as I went.

Just my 2c.

OjitosVerdes

We wrote our own "repeat after me" vows, too, and loved the process! So we don't have to memorize anything. However, we're sharing a special message from each other immediately prior to saying our vows that we will have kept secret until the day of - those are going on cards that the officiant will hand us. 

WiscDoll322

We're going old-school with the traditional vows. We're both pretty traditional and loved that the vows we're saying have been said forever. We toyed with the idea of writing of your own vows, but then got nervous we would forget them and didn't think of writing our own and doing the repeat-after-me thing!

ETA: forgotten letter. Gah!

button6004

We are writing our own but they will not be repeat after me vows. We are keeping them short and sweet.

[Deleted User]

We are customizing our "repeat after me" vows with our Pastor. We are sticking to a traditional Christian ceremony but we are adding in a few different parts into it that will make it unique to us. I'm so excited. We will finalize it this month with him.

flutterfly88

We are sticking with the traditional vows. We're doing a traditional Christian ceremony, but could've written our vows if we wanted to.

LeciaB

flutterfly88 said:

We are sticking with the traditional vows. We're doing a traditional Christian ceremony, but could've written our vows if we wanted to.

this ....

cedixon0

We're actually doing the traditional vows AND writing our own.  I'm more traditional and wanted to do the regular vows, but FI wanted to do something from the heart, so we decided to do both.  I know it'll make the ceremony a little longer, but I figure that's what the whole day is about, and both of our vows are only about 2 minutes long, so it won't add more than 5 minutes or so.  

dramamonkey

It's a Jewish/interfaith wedding - FI decided that, in addition to the traditional Jewish vows, we'd like to say one or two things to one another. It's a competition to see who can make the other cry. 

mimiphin

OjitosVerdes said:

We wrote our own "repeat after me" vows, too, and loved the process! So we don't have to memorize anything. However, we're sharing a special message from each other immediately prior to saying our vows that we will have kept secret until the day of - those are going on cards that the officiant will hand us. 

Could you explain this more? I am curious.

 

WedReMix13

saying our own

OjitosVerdes

mimiphin said:

OjitosVerdes said:

We wrote our own "repeat after me" vows, too, and loved the process! So we don't have to memorize anything. However, we're sharing a special message from each other immediately prior to saying our vows that we will have kept secret until the day of - those are going on cards that the officiant will hand us. 

Could you explain this more? I am curious.

 

Sure! What we're doing is similar to writing a (very brief) letter to one another but instead of reading them privately before the ceremony, we'll read them out loud to each othe during. This was a compromise that we came up with because FI wanted us to individually write our vows and surprise each other with them the day of the wedding, and I wanted to write our vows together. So we wrote our vows together but still have this "surprise" element. 

Edited for clarity.

ginter27

We did traditional repeat after me vows because we are writing letters to each other to read before the ceremony. I think that is more personal.

Iloveshanej

We did custom vows.