Wedding Vows – How To Write Your Own Unique Ceremony

By Ellie Thomson

These days there are numerous sets of traditional wedding vows to choose from. Just use the internet and you’ll find more than you could read. But for many couples, these vows don’t adequately expess the uniqueness of their relationship, so they decide to write their own.

This is the perfect way to a create personal and intimate wedding ceremony that reflects the way that you and your partner feel about each other. After all, your relationship is totally unique and nobody else will experience the love that you feel for each other in exactly the same way.

But before you begin to write, the first step is to identify your true feelings towards your partner. Take time to think in depth about how you feel. Sit down together and talk about your marriage, your hopes and expectations for the future.

For example;

When did you first meet?

Where did you first meet?

How did your life change after you met?

When did you realize that you were in love? How did you feel?

What do you love about your partner?

What inspires you about him/her?

What have you learnt from each other?

What has been the happiest/funniest/most important moment of your relationship?

How would you describe your love?

What makes your relationship strong?

What dreams and hopes for the future do you share?

What are your joint life goals?

Once you’ve decided on the aspects of your relationship that you find most important, it’s time to work out the best way to express them.

A good way to get started is for you and your partner to take a separate piece of paper, and at the top write “I love [partner's name] because…” Just start writing and don’t stop until you’ve filled the page. At this stage, don’t worry about spelling, grammar or even how good each point is. Just keep writing and let the ideas flow, you can tidy them up later.

Once you’ve done that, each of you should write down a list of qualities that you bring to the relationship. What promises can you make?

For example; do you promise to be physically and mentally faithful?

Do you promise to love and support each other for the rest of your days?

Do you promise to share all your possessions?

Keep thinking and keep writing until you’ve got a list of promises that you would be prepared to make. Again, don’t worry about the style of the form of each promise, you can tidy that up later. You’re looking for general ideas at present. If you get stuck, write from the heart and see what emerges from the end of your pen.

Work Out The Best Way To Phrase Your Vows

Think about the words that you want to use. How will you refer to your partner? Partner? Spouse? Husband? Wife? Better half? Soulmate? How do the words that you choose fit in with the feelings and emotions that you want to convey?

Are you each going to write your own vows, or would you rather write them together and both repeat the same words? If you intend to write your own unique vows, they will sound better if you agree to use the same style of language and make sure that they flow together nicely.

It’s understandable that you want to surprise your partner with your vows at the wedding, but they might sound incompatible if you recite a Shakespeare inspired sonnet and your partner’s vows sounds like the latest pop song!

If you have problems knowing what to write, take a look at some of the examples available on the internet. You can find any style you want, including traditional, religious, non-traditional, second marriage, vows for older couples, renewal vows, classic vows from Keats, Shakespeare etc. In fact, some couples decide to combine their own vows with sections from traditional texts.

If Possible Write More Than You Need

This will give you scope to trim and sculpt your words until they’re perfect. Ideally, each partner will have three or four compliments to make and the same number of promises. This will prevent the reading from taking too long, and allow each vow to remain poignant. If you have too many vows that you want to include, it’s always possible to add them to the main part of the ceremony.

Read Your Vows Out Loud

Besides being a good way to iron out any awkward wording, it will help you decide whether you’re happy with your vows.

How do you feel when you read them?

Are you prepared to make and keep these promises?

Is there anything that you would be embarrassed to say infront of your family and friends?

Is there anything that you could do to make the words flow more smoothly?

Keep making subtle changes until your 100% happy with your vows. By the time you’ve finished with them, you should feel that they’re one of the best gifts you could ever make to your partner?

It’s always a good idea to discuss your wedding vows with the person who will be conducting your marriage to make sure they have no problems with the vows that you have written.

After your wedding, it’s a beautiful idea to have your vows printed and framed, perhaps with one of your wedding photos. This would make a special gift for your partner and a wonderful keepsake to remind you of your wedding and the promises that you made. It’s also something that you’ll be able to draw inspiration from when times are bad and cherish when times are good.

About the Author: For more information on writing your wedding vows and a free guide to organizing all your wedding essentials, visit YourWeddingDayEssentials.com

Source: www.isnare.com

Weddings in the many churches of the various faiths differ widely. Not only the procedures prescribed by the particular church but the training and beliefs of the individual minister andthe preferences of the couple play a part in determining the nature of the wedding ceremony. An occasional couple write a part of their own wording for wedding ceremony, incorporating their own convictions and commitment with the traditional vows.

Some ministers have developed their own introductory statements that precede the usual vows in the wedding cere-
mony. The following is used by permission as illustrative.

Wedding Ceremony Wording

Wedding Address to the Congregation
There is an ancient story which contains a profound insight: It is not good for man to be alone. We rightly approach a wedding ceremony with reverence and with awe. For marriage has welled up out of the depths of personal and social need. In it the fundamental impulses of the individual and the race, biological, personal and social, come to an overt focus. The
ceremony itself is the public avowal of a new relationship, the most basic which can exist among men.

It signifies that two people stand at one point along the unending stream of human development, a point at which count-
less others have stood before and countless more will stand in ages which are to come. Yet it is for the human race, as for them, unique in the totality of timeless aeons. The centuries of the past have looked forward to this occasion.

Those of the future should have good cause to regard it with respect and gratitude.

It is meet and proper that so awe-inspiring an occasion, when Eternity emerges as a visible point in the present, should be celebrated with dignity and solemnity. All races, tribes and cultures, from the most primitive to the most advanced, have made of this step an occasion for rejoicing and an expression through ceremony and rite of profound social concern. So today, society expresses its legitimate and inescapable interest.

For a wedding is more than the joining of two persons to each other. It is the closing of a link in the endless chain of human relationships, a link which binds the present to the past and out of which the future can most advantageously emerge.

The wedding is properly a religious ceremony. For in marriage, basic forces which determine human destiny find their richest and most creative expression. The noblest sentiments and highest ideals of the human soul stand by In expectant concern for their future. The God who sustains all which is, ultimately presides.

photo credit: jameschew

Wedding Ceremony Wording Address to the Couple

For you, this ceremony will mean entrance into new relationships which will affect many aspects of your lives. Your legal status will be altered in important respects. The merger of names will symbolize an extensive change in your social status and relationships. Changed personal relationships, some of which may prove onerous, will remind you that things are no longer as they were.

It will mean for you a new security in your personal lives. For marriage is an oasis of refreshment and renewal in an often arid world, a point of stability amid the bewildering and often alarming changes of a rapidly shifting social scene. Your marriage will mean that each of you will have one whom you know and can respond to as a whole personality. In all the welter of mass humanity and whirling shifts of friendships, you can find stability.

Marriage will mean for you that intimacy which is necessary for the best satisfaction of the deepest needs of your souls. You will find a new security in acceptance, a security which is freely yours without the need for pretense and dissimulation.

For you there will always be one situation in which you can be as you really are, without risk of rejection. Marriage means in part, the weaving of a rope of relationships upon which each of you can put the full strain of your own worst, without fear that it will break.

You will find a new security and richness of love. Among the greatest needs of all is a two-way flow of affection. Marriage will increase and enrich this for you, unimpeded by conventions and unspoiled by fear of its loss. Such married love is above and beyond all other forms of human love.

In it alone are intermingled the depth, intimacy, and permanence essential for your greatest satisfaction and growth.

Your wedding means a recognition and acceptance of new social obligations. To marry is to enter into partnership in a building enterprise. It means the construction of a social relationship which inevitably involves others. To marry is not only to establish a center of emotional security for yourselves. It is to create a basic unit of society.

And in so doing you find your own greatest fulfillment.

The vows which you are about to take pledge you to fidelity, one to the other. This does not merely mean fidelity to taboos, or even to a person.

The man and woman who live together secure in each other’s love are being faithful to far more than each other. They are being faithful to a social situation which can produce people who can live without fear, who are sufficiently mature emotionally as neither to seek nor to need dictatorship and aggression. They are being faithful to the basic foundations of the social structure in which all are formed and nourished.

They are being faithful to the provisions which society makes for the protection and the development of the deepest needs of persons. When you marry you do far more than to take unto yourself a spouse. You take a piece of the social future into your hands.

Then follow the usual vows and prayers.

Read more about planning a wedding.

I hope this is helpful in your search for Wording For Wedding Ceremony.