How To Write Wedding Vows: Your Guide

One of the least spoken about aspects of a wedding seem to be the vows. There are plenty of guides for planning weddings, finding the right dress, or choosing a photographer, but tips for writing your wedding vows aren't nearly as prominent, and we wanted to change that. 

Writing down how you feel about something or someone and then having the words that outmatch what you feel inside can be challenging, even more so when your writing is as monumental and unique as the vows you will say on your wedding day. The often unspoken rule of wedding vows is that they are ultimately the center of a marriage; they reflect the pledges, reasons, ideals, wants & needs we promise to one another in our relationship heading forward. Wedding vows are a great way to tell our partners how we feel about them, what we think of them, and how they make us believe; an unfiltered look into the love that we possess for our other halves. While some vows are rooted in religion or words that reflect your faith, brides and grooms choose to write their own from the heart.

In our latest from our 'Guide' series, we delved into the process of writing vows to give you some tips for your wedding day.

(pictured: real bride Alycia exchanging vows with her husband on their wedding day)

Writing Wedding Vows: Find Some Inspiration

While we're not advocating for you to plagiarise your vows, it's a good idea to look up the vows others have said at their wedding to get a good idea of how it's done and the ways others have made vows flow at their wedding ceremony. Understanding the general concept of vows is a great starting point for when you sit down to write your very own from scratch.

Another way to find some inspiration is to look online. There is an endless supply of places you can find wedding vows these days, but an example of a few of these would be things like Pinterest quote boards, songs or lines from movies that have left a deep mark on your soul or a book you've read where some of the lines stood out to you and made you think of your soulmate. Some people even choose to include small quotes from others within their vows, but that's totally up to each bride and how they wish to do things.

How to Write Your Wedding Vows: Run It Through Several Drafts

Rarely any memorable or great piece of writing that history has ever seen was done in one take. Even the greatest poets make mistakes and have to rewrite parts a bunch of times - allow yourself the room to make mistakes, sound lame or cheesy, and spend time thinking it to make it fit your special person the right way, you'll always find it eventually.

One of the best tactics to start of with is to simply free write: don't try to stay within a specific length of words or make it too short - just write freely about the things you want to convey in your vows and edit them down later or reword it as you read back over it afterward. A good trick is to ask yourself questions and after you've thought about the answers, write them down. An excellent example of this would be questions like:

• Why do I love my partner so much?
• How did I feel when we first met & how do they make me feel now?
• What does marriage mean to me?
• What lessons has my partner taught me?
• What have we overcome together?

There is an endless list of questions you can ask yourself about your partner or your relationship, and doing so can help you come up with the perfect things you'll want to cover in your vows. Just remember that vows are meant to express your intent and promises to your partner from the day of your wedding onwards as you look back on your time together, and it'll reduce so much stress for you!

Take A Trip Down Memory Lane

While we don't realize it till much later, we've all started planning the writing of our vows from the day we meet that special someone - every memory, every height we reach together, every day we spend putting love first - these are all parts of life that will help you define what you want your vows to be. So when you're planning out the writing of your vows, it's a good idea to look into the past. Bring up old photos, go back through Facebook memories or Instagram posts, look through any trinkets, items, or reminders your partner has given you over the years, and think about what all these things mean to you & how they made you feel. It'll help a lot. All these little moments in time, filled with love and the growth of a relationship, are all markers and make up why we're in love with the person we want to marry.

Look Towards Traditions

You'll find a lot of traditional words coming up in the vows exchanged at a wedding ceremony. Some of these are as old as time itself, such as 'for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health' or speaking about 'cherishing each other for the rest of our lives and so forth. These are good points to look back at and be creative with. You can adapt or rewrite these traditional sayings to fit your relationship or to give you an idea of the vows others have exchanged in the past and how they work for you today.

We hope some of the advice we've had in this guide has helped you, and if you have any other advice, we'd love to hear it in the comments below for any brides who might be in the same position as you!