Tips for Writing Your Wedding Vows
Make them sound like you
Writing your own wedding vows sounds wonderfully romantic… until you sit down with a blank page and suddenly forget every meaningful thing you’ve ever wanted to say!
At Styled to Remember, after 16 years in the wedding industry, we’ve heard plenty of vows — the beautiful, the emotional, the hilarious and the ones that have had an entire room reaching for the tissues.
The good news? Your vows don’t need to sound like they belong in a film. They simply need to sound like you.
Start with your story
Think back to where it all began. What did you first notice about your partner? When did you realise this was something special? What have you been through together that brought you to this moment?
You don’t need to tell your entire love story. One little memory can say far more than a long speech.
Say what you love about them
Forget the generic lines and think about the things that are uniquely them.
Maybe they always make you a cup of tea without asking. Perhaps they know exactly how to make you laugh when you’ve had a terrible day. Maybe they’re the calm one when you’re panicking — or possibly they’re the reason you’re panicking in the first place!
Those tiny details are what make vows personal.
Make some actual promises
They are called vows for a reason.
Alongside the big promises — loving, supporting and standing beside one another — add a couple that belong specifically to your relationship.
Promise to always share the last slice of pizza.
Promise to pretend you don’t mind their snoring.
Promise to keep planning adventures together.
A little humour amongst the emotion can be absolutely perfect.
Don’t try to sound like somebody else
You don’t suddenly need to become Shakespeare because you’re getting married.
If you’re naturally funny, be funny. If you’re sentimental, embrace it. If you’re normally quite reserved, you don’t need three pages of declarations of love.
Your partner is marrying you, so write in the same way you would actually speak to them.
Keep them a sensible length
You don’t need a ten-minute monologue to make your vows meaningful. Around one to two minutes each is usually plenty.
And if one of you has written half a page while the other has produced a small novel, you might want to agree on an approximate length beforehand!
Read them out loud
This makes such a difference.
Something can look beautiful written down but feel completely unnatural when spoken. Reading your vows aloud will help you spot sentences that are too long, words you wouldn’t normally use and places where you naturally want to pause.
And finally… don’t leave them until the morning of the wedding!
We’ve seen enough wedding mornings to know there is already plenty happening without somebody frantically trying to write heartfelt vows while hair and makeup are underway and someone is asking where the buttonholes have gone.
Give yourself time. Write a first draft, leave it for a few days and come back to it.
And when the moment arrives, don’t worry about saying every word perfectly. Look at the person you’re marrying and mean what you say.
Those are the vows they'll remember 🤍
From the Styled to Remember team — helping all those carefully planned details come together beautifully on the day.
Comments