Vows: To Talk or Not to Talk

When planning your actual wedding service, should you have that luxury (see post dated September 21, 2010 about choosing your wedding minister), there comes a point where you have to decide what to do about your actual vows. You may like the vows that are already in the ceremony of your choice, but sometimes a couple wants more – or less. Let me explain.

Loosely, there are two parts to your vows: the “I do’s” (sometimes called the statement of intent); and the part where you repeat after me.  If you have a choice, there are reasons to have, or not have, either or both. You can quote me on that.

Obviously, your more traditional service will have both, with a question thrown in for Dad about giving away his precious daughter. That question usually goes, “Who presents this woman to be married to this man?” (I can’t think about giving away my own daughter. I see the pain in the dad’s eyes every week – well, most weeks.) The more liberated service might skip that part.

A more contemporary service will often have either “I do's” or repeats, but NOT both. When designing your own service, there is no right or wrong. For couples that don’t really want to say much out loud, the choice to skip the repeat-after-me part makes sense. They can put all the important stuff into the question that they answer “I do” or “I will.”

If you also keep the repeats short at the ring exchange (something like, “with this ring I thee wed” as you place the ring on each others' finger) a couple can get married and only say eight words aloud. This idea is appealing to many couples especially if a bride or groom suffers from stage fright, is not a native English speaker, or is physically handicapped and cannot speak clearly. 

Of course, it’s easy to skip the “I do’s” if they don’t fit into your contemporary ceremony. Just highlight and hit “backspace.”

Some people get more creative with the vows than just writing their own or repeating them after me. Sometimes a couple will bring their vows with them to the altar, written on scrolls or nice, handmade paper, and either read them aloud to each other or give them to me to repeat aloud. (I don’t recommend memorizing anything for your wedding day, much less your vows.) Sometimes a couple will simply exchange the scrolls and the minister says something like, “The bride and groom have prepared vows for each other, which they will share together later in private.” I kind of like this but it only fits for certain couples and certain ceremonies.

As for writing your own vows, that idea is attractive to many couples. Just remember to read over lots of other vows first to get ideas. Sometimes couples are satisfied to Frankenstein together their own vows by putting together individual lines of other vows into their own, personalized set of vows.

If you move forward with writing your original or pieced-together vows, make sure you design them to have nice breaks for repeating aloud and not long, prose-like sentences that don’t make sense when offered up in pieces. Keep in mind that you don’t want to have more than four to six words to remember at one time when repeating after me. Most importantly, try them out loud on each other. Sometimes two words look just fine next to each other on the printed page but become mortal enemies when spoken aloud.

Don’t be discouraged if your project of writing your own vows does not come to fruition. Many couples don’t follow through with this idea because, first, it is really difficult; and next, you must both have the right personalities to even try writing your own vows, and that kind of personality is somewhat rare. It would be unusual for both of you to really be into writing your own vows.  And lastly, most couples that don’t succeed in writing their own vows simply run out of time. In this economy many couples do a lot of the work themselves and run short on time as the day draws near.

The best idea is to have a back-up plan – a set of vows that is acceptable to both that can be given over to the minister at least a day before your service so that he can prepare for it. That way you’re covered if either of you can’t come up with your own words in time. 

DO NOT agree to get extemporaneous at your wedding and just wing it when it comes to your vows. Your day is too important to leave to chance and a nervous groom or bride. If you can’t write your own vows, give yourselves a break and choose some that are already written or do the swapping of the scrolls thing.

As for humor in your service, it can work but you must be careful. Although a wedding ceremony is a very dignified event, I have had couples personalize the service to point out well-known foibles in one or both of the couple and got tons of laughs. Just be careful to make sure it is a trait that is VERY obvious to everybody so the joke simply can’t be missed. You don’t want to hear crickets on your wedding day – only the peals of laughter and wedding bells.

-Rev. Sam

www.revsam.com