The Complete Guide to Writing Your Own Wedding Vows

Personalised wedding vows are the quickest way to make your ceremony special and unique. Here’s how to write the most meaningful words you’re ever likely to utter

In the midst of all the venue choosing, cake tasting and wedding dress shopping it can be easy to forget to spend time on the smaller, but just as key, parts of the big day.

When you boil a wedding down to the basics though, the ceremony – and especially the wedding vows – really are the single most important part of the day. After all, that’s the moment you go from being an engaged couple to actually being married! If you want to make sure this highlight of the wedding is as special and personalised as possible, it’s a good idea to consider writing your own marriage vows.

A good question to ask yourselves is: when you read through the set wording for wedding vows given to you by your officiant, do they feel personal to you? Do they sum up how you feel about getting married to your partner? Chances are that they don’t. To help you get started when it comes to writing vows that aren’t too cheesy and over the top, but full of heartfelt sentiment and eloquent expressions of your feelings, we’ve rounded up some examples from previous couples and have all the top tips to make your wedding vows as unique as your relationship.

To help you write your own wedding vows, we’ve compiled a step-by-step template to frame your promises to your partner in a beautiful way during your wedding ceremony.

Step one: Say “I love you”

It sounds simple but this is the crux of the matter and all too often that simple sentence can be missed out when couples are writing their own vows.

Step two: Share an anecdote

An anecdote or special story that shows how and why you love and value your partner to family and friends. It can be something simple that shows an admirable trait of their character or perhaps the story of how you met and knew they were the one. Short stories like these will make your vows really interesting for your guests too.

Step three: Explain that you’re in the relationship for the long haul.

This is similar to the “in sickness and in health” and “til death do us part” of the traditional religious wedding vows, but you can frame it in a more suitable way for you. Talk about how your wedding day is just the beginning of an exciting journey that you can’t wait to go on with your partner. Phrases like “I will love you unconditionally for the rest of my life”, “I promise to stand by your side”, “I can’t wait to make a life together” and “I can’t wait to grow old with you” work well here.

Step four: Make your promises.

The promises are an area you’ll really want to focus on when you write your own wedding vows. As well as the promise to love your partner from this day forward you might want to think about some more specific and unique promises that make your relationship special (think about inside jokes like “I vow to always get rid of wasps for you because I know you’re mortally afraid of them”.

You may want to come up with a list that starts each time with “I promise to always…” followed by the sentiment. You can then follow this with a list that starts “I promise to never”… Examples for this section include: “I promise to be patient and forgiving”; “I promise to cherish you”; “I promise to encourage you”; “I promise to support you”; “I promise to respect you” etc.

Step five: Open your vows out to include your family and friends.

The best personalised wedding vows acknowledge that it’s not just about you and your best friend on this wedding day and that it takes a lot more people to make a marriage a success. Mentioning that you’ll rely on the help and support of your loved ones is a beautiful way to make your guests feel included in what can otherwise be a very personal moment between the two of you.

While there is a lot of freedom to talk openly and honestly about your love for one another in your vows, there are still some rules you have to follow to ensure they are legally binding.

The first is that at a civil ceremony you are not allowed to include any religious references in the words at all. It depends how strict your registrar is, but some don’t allow words like “angel” and you won’t be able to say things like “I thank God every day that he sent you to me” or “in the presence of God” etc.

The only other thing that you legally have to take into account is making sure you “solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, (name), may not be joined in matrimony to (name)”. Your registrar will advise on when and where in the vows these statements need to be included though.

Writing not your forte? Don’t panic, because putting pen to paper can be daunting for a lot of people and sometimes it’s impossible to convey your feelings in simple words.

The good news is that some people are the exact opposite and manage to sum up the most intense emotions in an exquisitely beautiful way. So look to your favourite poets, authors, lyricists and scriptwriters for inspiration. Borrow a line or two from them that shows your other half exactly how important marrying them is.

Yes, you’ll be feeling overwhelming love for your soon-to-be wife or husband at this most emotional of times, but don’t get carried away with outlandish promises and over-the-top sentiments that you can’t maintain in everyday life. Promising to cook for them every day or promising to be a perfect wife or husband might sound romantic, but they are completely unrealistic.

Write about how you feel on a daily basis about your partner, not just on your wedding day. A list of special and personal promises is a lovely way to structure your speech.

Just like wedding speeches, the key to successful vows is keeping them short, and memorable. Your registrar might impose a limit anyway, but you only need to say a few lines of carefully composed words to make a real impact here. Time yourself saying them – one- or two-minutes max is ideal.

When you’re happy with your final draft, email it to your registrar to approve and check that it follows the rules. If you’re having a celebrant, it can be a good idea to send to them too, so they can understand the sort of tone you’re hoping to create during your wedding (if you’ve written funny wedding vows are funny for example, they’ll want to reflect this vibe too).

Practise saying your vows over and over. Saying your vows out loud can help you to iron out any strange sentence structure or parts that don’t quite come across as you’d hoped. It’ll also really help on the day when you’re feeling emotional, as your brain will remember what words are coming next.

You don’t want to be reading off a flimsy coffee-stained piece of paper. Write your vows on a clean piece of paper or consider having vow books or some other special way of presenting them.

You’ll want to remember your vows for the rest of your married lives, so consider having them immortalised into a beautiful gift that you can give to your new spouse after the wedding (or perhaps on your first anniversary as a paper gift – see more wedding anniversary gift ideas here). There are lots of lovely ideas from prints for your house to cufflinks and handkerchiefs.

If you’re staring at a blank page wondering how on earth to start writing your vows, it can really help to look at some examples from former brides and grooms for inspiration. Here are some beautiful vow examples from real weddings that will help inspire you to write your own heartfelt sentiments.