Crafting the perfect wedding vows
Writing your own wedding vows can be one of the most personal and meaningful parts of your wedding ceremony. It’s an opportunity to express your love, commitment and hopes for the future in your own words. However, the task can feel daunting, especially if you’re unsure where to start or how to articulate your feelings.
To help you get started, we’ve asked local celebrant Andrea Beaumont to share her top tips for writing heartfelt and memorable wedding vows. Whether you’re a wordsmith or struggling to find the right words, Andrea’s advice will guide you through the process and ensure your vows are a beautiful reflection of your relationship.
Andrea’s Advice
Hello lovers! My name is Andrea. I’m a marriage celebrant based in Sydney’s inner west but I get to marry people all over the place. I’ve curated more love stories than I can count! Of all the guidance I offer to my couples surrounding their ceremony, what I get asked about most is vows.
To be legally married, both you and your partner need to say your legal vows: “I call upon the people here present to witness that I (full name) take you (full name) to be my lawful wedded husband/wife/partner in marriage.” While it’s not a legal requirement, a lot of people will opt to share personal vows in addition to their legal vows. For ceremonies that have them, personal vows are considered one of the most significant parts of the ceremony. For those writing their personal wedding vows, it’s arguably the most daunting part of planning a ceremony.
You’ve been with your person for a significant amount of time already (months, years, decades), and you’re committing to a lifetime together, so how are you supposed to put all that time together into a few minutes of speaking? Truthfully, you can’t. There aren’t words in the English language (or any other language for that matter) that can truly encapsulate the depths of your heart, what your person means to you, or everything you wish for your marriage. Some people may not have the vocabulary for it at all. So as you sit down to write your wedding vows, here’s the best piece of advice I can give you - you can’t say everything and you don’t need to, so don’t try to.
Promise to keep promising
Instead, consider this: your wedding day is just one day of your entire life. It’s a big day, a really significant day, but it is just one day. As you start your married life, you’ll find new ways to love and support one another every day. As the two of you grow as individuals and as a couple, your dynamic will continuously evolve and your relationship will forever ebb and flow as needs change. With this in mind, as you promise yourselves to one another, promise to ride that wave together. You don’t need to predict the future, just voice your commitment to it. Realistically, you’ll be making new promises to each other and revising old ones for the rest of your life. Just promise to keep promising.
You don’t need to say everything you’ve every felt or everything you ever will feel, and once you can get your mind around that, you can take the pressure off yourself. There are thousands of different variations of what you could say, and you just need to pick one of them. As long as the words you say are a little piece of what’s in your heart, then they’re perfect.
Hopefully after reading this, you’ve had a slight shift in your headspace - I hope you’re feeling slightly more relaxed and eager to start this new chapter with your lover. With that, here’s a few practical tips for you.
Practical Tips
Firstly, have a chat with your future spouse about tone, length and structure. Doing this will avoid having one person’s vows be a 3000 word tear-jerker of an essay and the other being a 30 word knock-knock joke. Go for a similar mix of humour and sentimentality, silliness and seriousness. You already know each other incredibly well, so striking that balance and finding that happy medium shouldn’t be too difficult.
Agreeing on a structure will help alleviate the pressure of agreeing on a length. Your guests won’t notice if you have slightly different word counts for your vows, as long as they’re in a similar ball park and you hit similar points. The structure can be whatever the two of you decide on, however this is a pretty solid formula:
The Magic Formula
1. Opening - mention how happy you are to finally be there, how beautiful your partner looks, how perfect the day is, etc. (1 sentence)
2. You - talk about the impact your partner has had on your life. (2-3 sentences)
3. Your partner - talk about the traits your lover has, or things they do, that you love and admire. (2-3 sentences)
4. Promises - vows are quite literally promises you’re making. Put in a handful of sentences that start with “I promise to...”, “I promise I’ll keep...”, “I promise to try...” etc (3-5 sentences)
5. Ending - finish on a note about how excited you are to step into this next chapter together and, of course, say “I love you!” (1-2 sentences)
Of course, this is just a guideline, so take from it what you will and adapt to make it your own. When you’ve written your vows, send them through to your celebrant or a trusted neutral party who can check that your vows complement each other.
Now that you’re ready to write your wedding vows, I suggest making a date of it - either side by side or on your own. Grab yourself a cuppa or a glass of wine, get cosy, put on a wedding playlist and write out a little piece of your heart. Good luck!
Love, Andrea xx
