While rushing to write
your vows while you're getting dressed on your
wedding day is definitely not advised, is starting
too early also a problem? Most wedding advice says
you shouldn't because you will be tempted to work
them over and over and over again.
I, on the other hand, am a firm believer in starting
as soon as you can. With a rider of course. It all
depends on how you interpret "
start" and what
working on your vows entails.
There's work to do before
you start writing
out
Vows don't just come out of the air. Unless, of
course, you just google, find something that will
do, and copy. and paste. Which isn't, by any stretch
of the imagination, writing your own vows.
Trying to recycle someone else's commitment
doesn't work!
It doesn't work because all you're seeing is the
end of THEIR process, not the history, thought, and
personal commitment that was fed into that process,
nor the psychology of the specific word choices that
make those vows specific to that couple.
Consider you vows in the
context of your whole ceremony
out for
Your vows should complement your ceremony, not
duplicate parts of it. If you're getting married in
a celebrant-led ceremony, the ceremony will be
grounded in your relationship. It will be personal.
Which means it will naturally include references to
your story and to your feelings for one another. If,
however, you are marrying in a religious ceremony,
the ceremony will be grounded in liturgy, with
little or no personal references, meaning that the
only opportunity for you to make any sort of
personal statement about your relationship will be
through your vows. Under those circumstances,
following the common advice to include reminiscences
about how you met and include an anecdote or two,
makes sense.
Negotiate
out for
Some judicious negotiating before you get down to
actually writing your vows will pay dividends.
There are two people you need to reach agreement
with.
- The person who is officiating the ceremony
- Your partner
Your task will be made easier if you understand
the expectations of both!
In a civil celebrant led ceremony there are legal
vows that you need to make in order to be legally
married. And then there are personal vows. You
must comply with the legal requirements and ensure
that your personal vows meet legal requirements
(in Australia it is not permissable to put
conditions on your commitment to marriage) and
flow effortlessly when said in conjunction with
the legal words.
For symmetry the two of you need to make vows of
similar length. Your celebrant may have some
advice about how long they should be, expressed
either in word-count or minutes. For reference, I
recommend no more than 2 minutes.
But, you should also agree on a number of other
things, some of them purely logistical, others
important to your relationship.
- Will you work on your vows together, or keep
them a surprise for the day?
- Will you
- read your vows
- repeat after your celebrant, or
- do something unusual, like frame your
personal promises as a question and answer
conversation between the two of you?
- Are you going to have a discussion about the
broad areas you are both going to commit to but
do the actual writing of your promises in each
in your own style?
- Or will you work on core promises together, so
you make identical promises, but each add one or
two personal promises you haven't shared
beforehand?
Think first, draft next,
write last
out for
Or, to put it another way
- Explore what you want to say in your head well
before you put pen to paper or fingers to
keyboard
- Develop the structure - what goes first, what
will you say in the middle, and how will you
wrap it up
- Scribble! Don't worry about sentence
structure, perfect grammar, or even necessarily
the perfect words. Just get your thoughts down
- Let it settle and then come back to it, review
to ensure that you've covered the bases, and
only then edit til you have a final version that
says what you want it to say, and it easy to
read or say out loud.
Share with your celebrant
out for
Your celebrant needs to see your vows ahead of your
ceremony in order to be able to
- compare your vows with your partner's for
length
- to make sure that your personal promises meet
legal requirements (there are some!)
- to be alerted to any need to make changes to
the ceremony script in order to avoid
duplication
Practice, practice,
practice
out for
Practice saying your vows out loud. Again and again.
The more familiar your tongue is with your vows, the
more confident you'll feel on the day.
Format and print
out for
If you are reading your vows, print in a clear and
large font on an attractive card. You need to be
able to read them, easily, and you want the card to
look great in the photos.
Thanks for reading!