How I Wrote My Vows
Writing your own wedding vows is one of the more intimate and personal things you can do on your wedding day. My husband and I wanted to take a stab at this idea ourselves (8 years ago). It was important to have guidelines. We need to make sure that the structure was easy for both of us to follow and help us put into words what we were trying to express. Isn’t that the hardest part of considering writing your own vows? How do I even start by telling this person I love that I want to commit to them for the rest of my life and how much they have meant to me and how grateful I am that they have touched my life? That alone is intimidating.
So I came up with this great idea… let’s take a trip. I will bring the guidelines with us and we will take the time at some point in our vacation to sit down separately and write. So we went to Colorado during the summer (which isn’t that the most amazing time?) and we rented a jeep and listened to Bob Schneider and we drove thru the state and posted up at a few different mountain towns for a couple of weeks.
Then the last few days, we went to Vail (it’s where his Dad used to take him when he was younger) and we stayed in the village and we found a pretty creek and took our guidelines and our journals and we sat separately and I wrote my vows.
That worked for me… it was beautiful. For him… not so much. It felt “forced” to sit down by a creek and put into words right in this exact moment. That was a good lesson of understanding my partner. What worked for me, did not work for him. It sounded dreamy, but the end result wasn’t for him. That is ok.
It’s important for us to realize that the way one person writes is different than our partners. We have different love languages. We have different things that make us wild about the other person and we also have things that align so perfectly.
Well vow writing for him wasn’t by the creek. However, we came back home and I finished up the final touches on my vows and he wrote his by a certain time so we had time to make necessary changes. We sent them to our very best friend to help us align so one person didn’t “say more” than the other. We were open to hearing how to make modifications so we can make sure that it felt connected and fulfilling to each person. We also thought that the person that should help us align our vows was someone who knew both of us well enough to help put into words what our heartfelt.
Then we sent our vows to our officiant who also read them and added or removed them accordingly. We had them printed in special vow books and our officiant hung on to them during the ceremony until it was time to read them.
They were the perfect combination of funny, sweet, loving, and the things we hoped for in marriage.
TAKEAWAYS TO WRITING YOUR VOWS
Have a structure.
Find a time that works for you to write. It doesn’t have to be at the same time.
Have a deadline of when your first draft needs to be complete so you can send them to someone that knows you both well enough to review them.
Be open to modifications to your vows. There is nothing worse than one person saying things that are really sweet and the other person joking the entire time. One person is getting the short end of the stick.
Have them printed and easy to read. You will be emotional on wedding day, you want to make sure you can read your vows.