I get asked regularly about vows and how to make them truly your own. In almost every meeting with my couples, this is the part where real relief comes across their faces - no, you will not be alone in writing your vows, I promise, and will give you as much help and guidance and ideas as you need!
Here is one of the first pieces of advice I share, different ways that you can do your vows:
Essentially there are three ways to do vows:
A question or multiple questions that I read and you answer either “I do” or “I will” or even "I'll try" or a combination of all of them.
Vows that you say in phrases, as a “repeat after me.”
Vows that you read yourself from a card which I will hand you at the time – on 5” x 7” cards, in 16 point Arial, making them easy to read, with the emotion they deserve, and hand back afterward.
Most of our couples do the type of vows described in #3 nowadays, as a way to personally express their feelings and their vows to each other, or a combination of #1 and #3, to allow them to say “I do” as well as express their own feelings – unless they hate to speak in front of people, in which case they usually do multiple #1 type questions.
We've also had some couples recently do a #4 type vows, which are like a conversation back and forth with each other, line by line.
I'll share some suggestions for each, as well as some guidance on vows, in future posts.