Example wedding vows
Four tones, so you can hear the difference. Take the shape if it helps — but the specifics have to be yours, or it will sound like it came from a website.
Every example below is written for this page. They are deliberately full of detail that could only belong to one couple, because that is the point being demonstrated. Your version should be full of detail that could only belong to you.
Plain
Unadorned. No flourishes, nothing raised above the level of ordinary speech. Hardest to write and often the most affecting.
Plain
Sarah.
I knew when the car broke down outside Preston and you got out and looked at the engine like you had any idea what you were doing.
You are the person who leaves the last of the coffee in the pot for me. You have never mentioned it. I have never mentioned it. I am mentioning it now.
So here is what I promise you. I promise to make you laugh before I make my point. 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 a decision and not a feeling.
Whatever comes, I am choosing you.
Warm
A little more feeling in the joins. Still plain-spoken, but it lets itself be moved.
Warm
Dan,
I knew — really knew — when we got caught in the rain outside the station and you just laughed, and I thought, oh. There you are.
You are the person who warms my side of the bed before I get in. It is such a small thing. It is the one I would miss most.
We got through last year, and somewhere in it I stopped wondering whether we could.
So this is what I promise you. I promise to keep asking how you actually are, and to wait for the second answer. I promise to be kind first and right later. I promise that whatever this becomes, I will be in it with you.
You have my whole life. It is yours.
Light
Room to be funny. The trick is that the joke has to sit on top of something sincere, or it reads as deflection.
Light
Priya.
I would like to say I knew straight away. I did not. I knew about four months in, when I had food poisoning and you sat on the bathroom floor and read me the football results.
You are the person who reorganises my kitchen every time you visit, and I have decided to find that endearing for the rest of my life.
So, the promises. I promise to let you have the last word, out loud, while thinking something else. I promise to keep pretending I cannot hear the smoke alarm so you get to be the hero. I promise to be there for the unglamorous parts, which I understand are most of them.
You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I am going to spend a very long time being annoying about it.
Formal
For a ceremony where the register is more elevated. Restraint does the work, so the one specific detail lands harder.
Formal
Thomas,
It was when you stayed with my father through that last night in the hospital that I understood what you had become to me.
You are the person who writes things down so that I do not have to carry them, and it is in such things that I have come to know you.
And so I make you these promises. I promise you my honesty, including when it costs me something. I promise you my patience, which I know you will need. I promise to build a life with you rather than beside you.
From this day, whatever it holds, I am yours.
The traditional wording
If you would rather say the words that have been said for centuries, this is the familiar English form. It comes from the Book of Common Prayer, first set down in 1549 and revised in 1662; it is long out of copyright, and most modern ceremonies use some variation of it.
Traditional — Book of Common Prayer
I take thee to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.
Many couples keep the traditional promises and add one or two of their own afterwards. That tends to work well: the old words carry the weight, and the new ones carry the person.
Now write yours
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