Informal Wedding Vows

Beyond the Traditional

Some couples just aren't the "love, honor and cherish" type. The words of the classic wedding vows have been so overused in popular culture, you could probably recite them right now.

While there's some benefit to not needing to remember your lines on your wedding day, many couples would rather have their vows reflect their own reality rather than saying those words that have almost become meaningless because they've been repeated so many times.

Besides, those old words may sound pretty stodgy and formal to modern ears, and a modern wedding can handle more informal wedding vows.

Writing Your Own

Probably the most popular solution when you want to go beyond the traditional for wedding vows is writing your own. This is a great way to bring some of your own story into the wedding ceremony.

For example, if one or both members of the couple has children from a previous relationship, it would be lovely for the other parent to vow to love and raise those children as his or her own.

If you've been together a long time and faced an illness or some other tragedy together, saying more about that than "in sickness and in health" will make your vows that much more meaningful, and will educate people in the audience who might not otherwise understand the deep meaning of those vows.

The key when writing your own informal wedding vows is not to get too silly. Don't include jokes or a promise to always take out the garbage unless you're having a really informal ceremony with only close family members and friends who will understand your humor. Remember that there will probably be videotaped evidence of your ceremony, so don't say anything you wouldn't want to have to explain to your children.

Finding Informal Wedding Vow Sources

If you don't want to write your own wedding vows from scratch, there are many sources for sample wedding vows that you can look at. Here are some sources to get you started.

• Wedding Ministers has a collection of traditional, non-traditional and personalized wedding vows, as well as thoughts for other readings.
• Wedding Yellow Pages has a great collection of contemporary religious vows, interfaith and intercultural vows, contemporary vows, vows for second marriages and marriages later in life, even some classic celebrity wedding vows (Elvis and Priscilla, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, even Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love).
• Chicago Marriage has some good thoughts about how to choose the style of wedding vows yo'd like to use, as well as some examples.

There are also many books that can help you find the perfect vows for your situation, such as:

• The Everything Wedding Vows Book by Janet Anastasio, Michelle Bevilacqua, Leah Furman, and Elina Furman
• The Knot Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions by Carley Roney and Editors Of The Knot
• Diane Warner's Complete Book of Wedding Vows by Diane Warner
• Weddings from the Heart by Daphne Rose Kingma
• I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook by Shonnie Lavender and Bruce Mulkey

There are many other books in this vein that you will find online or at your local bookstore. Spend some time browsing these books together and see if there's a vow that really speaks to you as a couple, that says all that you want to be able to say to each other on your special day.

You can always rewrite a published vow to fit your experience better or to change a word or a phrase you don't like. But if you find yourself crying as you read a particular passage, that's probably the one you want to go with.