How to write your wedding vows

The hard part is not the writing. It is deciding what you actually want to say in front of everyone you know.

Most advice about vows is about structure, and structure is the easy bit. The reason vows fall flat is almost always the same: they are made of statements that would be true of anybody. You are my best friend. I promise to always support you. Nobody doubts you mean it. It just does not tell the room anything they could not have guessed.

The vows people remember are specific to the point of being slightly odd. A particular Tuesday. A thing they do with their hands. A promise so exact it could only be made to one person. That is the whole craft, and everything below is in service of it.

Start with what you would say if nobody was listening

Write the first draft as if it will never be read out. No audience, no grandparents, no photographer. Just the two of you and the thing you would actually say.

You will cut some of it. But you cannot edit your way from a formal draft to an honest one, and you can always edit an honest one down.

Be specific, and then be more specific

Take any line you have written and ask whether it could appear in someone else's vows. If it could, it is not finished.

• "You always make me laugh" → "You do the voice when you know I have had a bad day, and it works every time, and I have never once told you that."
• "I promise to support your dreams" → "I promise not to say I told you so, even the times I did."
• "We have been through a lot" → "We spent that whole February in the hospital car park eating terrible sandwiches, and you never once complained."

The specific version is shorter to feel and longer to read. That trade is always worth it.

The shape most good vows follow

Not a rule, but it is a reliable place to start, and it is the shape the vow builder uses:

1. Say their name. Out loud, at the start. It settles you and it tells the room this is addressed to one person.
2. The moment you knew. One specific occasion, not the whole history. You are not reading a timeline.
3. Who they are to you. The small ordinary thing, not the grand quality.
4. The promises. Two to four. Concrete enough that someone could tell whether you had kept them.
5. What you are committing to. One line. Land it and stop.

Make promises you could be held to

"I promise to love you forever" is not a promise, it is a hope. A promise has an edge: something you could fail at, which is what makes keeping it mean anything.

The good ones tend to be small and slightly funny and completely serious at the same time. I promise to keep making the coffee. I promise to tell you when something is wrong instead of going quiet for two days. I promise to keep choosing this, on the days it is easy and on the days it is a decision.

How long

Shorter than you think. Vows are read slowly, with pauses you do not plan for, and a page that looks brief on screen takes a surprising while out loud.

There is only one reliable way to know: read yours aloud and time it, standing up, at the pace you would actually use. The builder shows a rough estimate from the word count, but the stopwatch is the real test.

If you and your partner are writing separately, agree roughly how long beforehand. One person speaking for four minutes after the other spoke for forty seconds is uncomfortable for everybody, most of all for them.

Things worth avoiding

• Inside jokes only four people understand. One is charming. Three makes the room feel shut out on the day they came to be included.
• Quoting a film, a song, or a poem instead of yourself. A line you love is fine. A borrowed line doing the emotional work is a way of not saying it.
• Anything about an ex. Ever, including as a joke.
• Reading it for the first time on the day. Read it out loud to yourself at least twice beforehand. You will find two sentences you cannot get through, and you will want to know that in advance.

On the day

Print them. Phones lock, screens glare, and hands shake more than you expect. A card in your pocket in a font you can read at arm's length is the version that works. The builder's print option is set up for exactly that.

And it is completely fine to cry and completely fine to stop. Nobody has ever sat at a wedding wishing the vows had been more composed.

If you want somewhere to start from instead, there are example vows in four different tones, plus the traditional wording.