Some Prompts to Get You Started

Repetition of phrases such as:

• “I love the way you…”

• “I promise to…” or “I can’t promise to…but I can…”

• “You are the one who…”

• “You make me feel…”

• “I’ll never forget when you…”

• “I love it when you…”

• “Thank you for…”

• “I love you for…”

Retelling of key moments in your relationship:

• The story of how you met for the first time

• The moment you first realised you were in love

• The moment of proposal/deciding to get married

• The moment you met their parents/family for the first time, or they yours

• A fight you had that led to your love only becoming stronger

• A time your partner went above and beyond for you

• A time you were both seriously ill together

References to:

• A shared location you both love

• A pet

• Children (if you have any)

• A favourite song you share

• A favourite meal you share/holds a potent memory

• A dance you both know instantly

• A favourite movie

• An in-joke that nobody else understands

• A holiday you took

Openings:

• Often people will open with a list of nicknames/pet names that they call the other person, eg. “Dear Sarah, Sare Bare, Sezzles, Sexy Bum, Sex Bomb, my love bug, my little sniffler”

• Another great opener is a list of words to describe the other person, eg. “Brian. Passionate writer. Chef extraordinaire. Determined bushwalker. Terrible maker of the bed. Scooper of the litter box. Love of my life.”

• Or just start strong with a simple statement that sums up the rest of your vows. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Closing sentiments:

• Hopes for your shared future

• Promises or vows you’d like to make

• Addressing a child or other key person/animal in your lives

• Keep it simple and just sum up your love: “Can’t wait to share the rest of my life with you.”

• Or finish on a joke!

Examples of non-Personal Vows & I Do expansions

Many couples opt to share their personal vows in private and then share something a little less personal in the ceremony in front of guests, or are looking to expand on the ‘Do you take so-and-so to be your wife” moment with something a little more traditional. Below are some examples of non-personal vows and I Do expansions.

Celebrant: Do you take so-and-so to be your husband/wife/partner in marriage? Will you love and adore her, stand by her through all of life's challenges? Will you commit to nurturing your relationship with the care and devotion it deserves, loving unconditionally for the rest of your days, as you both journey through life together?

I promise to love you without reservation, honor and respect you, provide for your needs as best I can, protect you from harm, comfort you in times of distress, grow with you in mind and spirit, always be open and honest with you, and cherish you for as long as we both shall live.

Today, I choose to stand by your side as your partner. I choose to be a joy for your heart and your soul. I look forward to our life, learning, and growing with you through the changes in our lives. I promise respect for you as my partner and as an individual. May our journey be long together.

I [Name], take you [Name] to be my husband/wife, my partner in life and my one true love. I will cherish our union and love you more each day than I did the day before. I will trust you and respect you, laugh with you and cry with you, loving you faithfully through good times and bad, regardless of the obstacles we may face together. I give you my hand, my heart, and my love, from this day forward for as long as we both shall live.

[Name], I promise to love you, to be your best friend, to respect and support you, to be patient with you, to work together with you to achieve our goals, to accept you unconditionally, and to share life with you throughout the years.

And of course, the classic:

I [Name], take you [Name], to be my husband/wife/partner in marriage, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

I stand here with you as your partner, in love with who you are now and who you will be in the future. I pledge to listen, learn, support you, and care for you through all that happens in our lives. I will celebrate with you and mourn with you, being ever at your side. I love you and believe in you until the end of our days.

I choose you to be my companion, joining my life with yours. I vow to support, respect, and love you in all circumstances for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and health as long as we live.

Embraced by the presence today of the people who love us, I choose you to be my partner. I am proud to be with you and join my future with you. I pledge to support you, trust you, care for you, and respect you. I will love you in good times and bad as long as we both shall live.

I take you to be my partner. I pledge to be your best friend, your confidant, and your strength. I’ll work to create a household filled with love, peace, laughter, patience, and respect. I promise to grow old together with you, cherishing each day with you. I love you faithfully, through happy times and sadness, believing love is the strongest force for good in the world. I give you my hand to help and my heart to love forever.

I take you to be my partner every day of our lives. With you, the path of my life is illuminated with love. I promise to bring you the delight you bring me and share your sorrow as you share mine. Our lives will be one of respect, caring, joy, surprise, and wonder at the love we have together. I promise to be your home and shelter against any storm. I promise we will grow old with each, cherishing every day until our final breaths part us.

You are my love, confidant, and best friend. My love is constant when we are together and when we are apart. Today and every day we are together, I promise to laugh with you, cry with you, create a home, and grow with you. I pledge my help with your dreams and aspirations, respecting our ways of learning and existence in the world. I’ll love you forever and be by your side through sickness and health, poverty and wealth, for better and for worse.

Examples of Personal Vows

Reprinted with permission from my lovely friends, with all names changed.

Below is an example of a fairly standard length personal vow from a bride to her groom. If you’re not sure where to start with your vows, the “I promise to…/I can’t promise to” is a great structure to get you going, and you can be as serious or silly with it as you like.

Simon,

I adore you. I’ve heard that the best kind of love is when both people think they’re the lucky one and my God, I feel so lucky. Even when I come home and every single light in the house is switched on so that it feels like I’m in hospital or under interrogation. 

I promise to never stop learning from you. I love being wrong with you. It’s all the time too, I love how much you know and how ready you are to teach me. I love how willing you are to listen to me ramble on about interesting medical facts, empirical evidence and common misconceptions. We’re constantly teaching each other and I never want that to stop.

I promise to always be on your side. Your honestly and integrity are so beautiful and even though in nearly 9 years we’ve hardly had any fights to speak of, I’ve heard married people fight sometimes... I promise to fight with you and for you always.

I promise to never stop being grateful waking up everyday to those beautiful eyes of yours, (and yes, they are beautiful) looking at me like I am your whole world and telling me that I’ve somehow managed to grow more beautiful myself, over night. Again! With all the doubts that constantly run through my mind on any given day, I have never once had to doubt the way you feel about me. And I promise to show you every day of our lives how thankful I am that you chose me. 

I know that love is a choice. And not one you only make once. I promise to choose you and to keep choosing you, again and again. 

Below is an example of quite short vows. This couple met online.

Kenneth:

I don’t quite know how to put into words what you mean to me, Janelle, but I’ll do my best. Words are what brought us together, and what I first fell in love with about you – your ability to evoke such powerful things with just a few words. I love you for the poetry you weave into your everyday life, for the ways that you bring out the best in me. I didn’t think I would ever love again, but then I met you, and realised that it was possible to love even more deeply. You are already a part of my family, and I hope you feel that you are home when you’re with me. 

Janelle:

Ken, from the moment you first messaged me, I thought...who is this dork? I quickly realised that, while you are a huge dork, you are also the most thoughtful, kind, loving, hilarious man I have ever met. Meeting the way we did, I got to fall in love with all of the different parts with you before ever even meeting you. And when I met you, I knew I wanted to marry you. Thank you for welcoming me with open arms into your life and world. It’s an honour to be a Mason, and I couldn’t be happier to have found you when I had nearly given up my search. 

Below is an example of a pair of vows that are typically longer than average in length, and I wouldn’t recommend going much longer than this if you’re inclined to have a lot to say, too! They tell a great story, are quite sentimental in places, but have lots of personal references and in jokes directly for each other, and paint a really clear picture of their love story to their audience. They also use the “I promise/I can’t promise” structure, as well as “You are the person who…” to great effect. They use dates and numbers quite effectively as story markers, too.

Hugh: India. Buttons. Mother of Diva……Forgetter of Things……Breaker of Mugs. It’s been almost 2,050 days since I first thought about this day. In fact, it’s been closer to 1,924 days since I really first thought about this day so seriously that I bought a ring box. Not because I thought I was going to marry you then, but because I knew I was going to marry you one day. Today. 

Ever since we first shyly started discussing the house with a green wall. Or all of our ideas about “shreddings” and “shrarriages”. I have looked forward to this moment. And over the past few weeks I have attempted again and again to put words on a page to prepare for this moment. To summarise in only a few brief sentences and minutes everything I feel and think. 

And the truth is, that it is quite simply impossible. How can I put in to words a universe of emotions? A lifetime of thoughts, feelings, and experiences? An expansive history of moments leading to a future of endless possibilities?  Comparatively? By saying that you bring me more joy than surprise Caramello Koalas on a rainy day. No, that would never be enough. Nothing will ever be enough, and no amount of words will ever suffice to perfect this moment. 

Because this moment is not a declaration. It is not a vow or a promise, it is not a commitment, pledge or oath. It is the continuation of a privilege. The privilege that I get to live my life with you. That I get to laugh with you, and cry with you. Care for you and be cared by you. Share with you, grow with you and live with you. I get to have you be my person and be yours. I get to be there for you and support you and be supported by you always. I don’t have to honour and cherish you and I don’t have to take you for better or for worse – I get to. And this is a privilege I have enjoyed for 2,050 short days and look forward to for 250,000 more.

For while it is plain to see that there is no one I would rather be standing here with today, the truth is there is no one I would rather do anything on any day with more than you. You are the only person I want to see every morning when I wake up. And the only person I want to hold every night when I go to sleep. Good news isn’t truly good until I’ve shared it with you. And bad news cannot be overcome until I’ve worked through it with you. 

You are the only person I want to dance with, laugh with, drive with, play music with, eat with or smash plates, glasses, and mugs with. My day is never complete until I have told you about every meaningless second of mine and heard about every minute detail of yours. Whether it be late at night in bed, or early in the afternoon walking the puppy or driving home, I will always have an ear for you. Even if you have to repeat half the information because I’m going deaf. 

If I do make any promises, I want to make something real. Something I can spend my life working towards and living up to. I cannot promise you a life without pain. A life without sadness, anger or despair. But I promise you will never feel any of those things alone.  You will never feel like there is no one there to hold your hand. Or catch you when you fall. You will never feel unsupported in your decisions. Or trapped by your choices. You will always feel accepted, considered, cared for, understood, and loved. Because in a life, where I have often felt confused, anxious, troubled, misunderstood or out of place, you have never failed to make me feel this way. Without ever trying or pretending, you are the only person who knows me, understands me and that I never have to hide any part of me from. For you have never made me feel unworthy, or in need of change, you have never weakened me, or made me ashamed. You only make me stronger, happier, more confident, secure, and loved. With you, I am truly understood, genuinely accepted, and unfalteringly loved, always.

I have never been as sure about anything in my life as sure I am that it is a life I want to spend with you. For no matter what we do or where we are, I will always be happy, safe and at home. 

And no matter where life leads us, if we are there together, then that it is where we are meant to be. For as we sit together in a comfortable silence, I know I am at peace.  So now, that I stand in this moment. Unsuccessful in saying all that I wanted to say. Expressing every undying feeling and emotion, doing all that I wanted to do and declaring, promising, and vowing all that I wanted to vow. I simply ask that you let me make it up to you, by spending the rest of my life making you feel how I feel every single day. 

And that would be a pretty good ending to some pretty mushy vows, but more than anything, even when I was struggling to write a single word, I knew one thing for sure, I knew I wanted to end on a particular note, and that is; That I’ve known for 2,050 days that I’d marry you…because anyone who doesn’t lock down a booty that incredible is an idiot. And I am not an idiot. I love you. 

India: You were not the man of my dreams. (giggle giggle). Let me digress for a moment after making such an extraordinary opening statement. 

When I was about 14, I stood in the laundry with my mother. Most likely watching her do or fold the washing, but not really helping, just peacefully watching as I do. Now as you and many here know, my memory is not too great, so I may have been 6, or even 23, but I’m pretty sure I was about 14, so for the sake of this story, I was definitely 14….probably. And I, well actually I could’ve also been on the patio, and in fact I may have been with Dad, but nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I was 14, with mum, in the laundry.

And I for whatever reason, asked my mother, “How do you know when you’re in love?”.

Without skipping a beat and continuing with the washing, she replied, “Well, you just know”.

Now, being half my father’s daughter, I was after a far more objective answer, something measurable, with dot points and subheadings, randomised control trials hypothesising physical manifestations of love. Instead, I got the very subjective, “you just, know”. 

Despite being completely dissatisfied with this answer, it still stuck with me from that day on. For years to come I found myself trying to work out whether I had felt love, knew love, understood love, questioning myself, but always in the back of my mind was that nagging question, but do I know?  In fact, it was my mother’s nagging voice saying “You just know India. Do you know? Probably not if you’re asking me”.

Then I moved to Melbourne. A massive change in my life.  And not too long later, I met this ridiculously odd and funny guy. This one. Who still got my attention, even after managing to instigate ‘the’ most awkward hug of my life, openly insulting the makeup I had done for a friend (“well you just went to town with the glitter didn’t you!”), and coming an inch close to dropping me on the famously sticky Corner Hotel dance floor in an epic dip. A few days later, we went on our first date. And four weeks later, after getting off the phone to you late at night, I picked up my phone again, and wrote a little note to myself with just the date, and the word, ‘love’. 

Because at that moment, I finally, just, knew. I finally understood what my mother had meant.  How could she have possibly explained love to a ‘somewhere between 6 and 23 but probably 14-year-old’? How could she tell me what to look out for, what to search for, what to dream of?  

And with that I come back to my opening statement. How could I have possibly dreamt you up? Known to expect you? When meeting you, getting to know you, and finally just knowing love, has created the person of my dreams I never knew existed.  You weren’t the man of my dreams before I put that little note in my phone because I couldn’t have dreamed that big, but you are now and will always be.

Now that I “just know”, I add only one thing. To know love for someone, you need to know love in return.  I later found out that also four weeks after our first date you bought a little black and green box made out of Lego, which years later you carried to the top of Falls of Bruar in Scotland, to carry this little ring in. Know love in return, I did. 

So with that I say to you on this day, where we celebrate everything us:

I can’t promise that I won’t forever tell stories and forget the details, or even forget that I’ve already told you the story. But I can promise that I’ll be excited to share my stories with you no matter how much of it I’ve forgotten. And I ask that you be patient with me and continue to enjoy hearing about my excited retelling of events that took place even though you were with me when they happened. I can’t promise that I won’t ever stop being the big kid that I am. But I can promise that I’ll collect just as many comical art pieces, Lego, toys and theme park visits for you as I do for me. And I ask that you continue to enjoy all of the activities, hobbies and theme park attractions with me that don’t involve heights, 3D screens or fast-moving parts. I can’t promise I won’t always steal the bed sheets, blankets, bed, hot water, last Mint Slice or your time every morning in order for you to make my breakfast and coffee. But I can promise that it’s never on purpose. And I ask you not to expect much of that to change….and please keep getting my towel for me after every shower, that’s really nice. I can’t promise that things won’t change, that life won’t deal us challenges and obstacles and shitty days. But I can promise you that I’ll be there for every hard decision, every productive Think Tank dog walk, and every hug and schnuggle. And I ask that you continue to let me love you as you do, continue to love me as you do, and continue to let this crazy little duo be the best we can be. 

Because there is nothing, I want more from our marriage, than to just be as we are, wherever that we are, forever as we are, to forever just know. 

Below is an example of a celebrant’s introduction to personal vows, and a set of vows fairly standard in length, and quite light and cheeky in tone. Also includes an address from the groom to the bride’s daughter from a previous relationship.

Celebrant: Wedding vows are a sacred thing. They call on you to declare your love, both to make this marriage official and also to open your hearts to one another. I’d now like to invite you both to share some personal words, that I know you both have agonised over making perfect. Having had the honour of already knowing what’s to come, I can say that they are as perfect as they could possibly be, because they are true and come straight from your hearts.

Phil: Unlike some of our game levels I’ve been advised to keep these vows like you - short and sweet. We’ll see. Chloe Rose Hendricks, nothing could make me happier than marrying you today in these gardens, rain, hail or shine. I went with (whatever the weather is) today. I hope that’s ok.  

From the moment I saw you, you mystified me. INXS has never sounded better then right there at conference karaoke. You were magical and right away I knew my heart was yours. Not star-crossed but Starcraft lovers. (That’s a little nerd joke everyone). And while that might sound less dramatic that’s just the way we like it. Life will continue to throw its challenges as it always does but with you and Rose on my team, I know we can beat them all in spectacular fashion. 

Rose, I vow to love and cherish your mother with every fibre of my being. Thank you for giving me the go-ahead, you can have all the ice-cream you want, as promised. I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together building our best world yet and while this may be short and sweet the future is only looking longer and sweeter.

Rose: Phil. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, as you well know. When we first began to talk of marriage I had only one request: that you make the proposal as over the top as possible. And you certainly succeeded; when you came down out of the sky, upside down, dressed as Spiderman, I nearly had a heart attack. But then I heard your voice, and pulled your mask down, and you spoke the most romantic words to me that I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m sure you remember them as well as I do. 

 From the very first moment that we met, as you emerged from that stinky women’s bathroom, I knew I’d found someone special. You’re the only person I know who uses a handkerchief. I’ve never met anyone else who folds and colour codes their socks as neatly as you do. Your passion for music has broadened my horizons, though I still have no interest in listening to your Birthday Party records. Most of all, I love the way that you love Rose. 

From the moment that you two met and I saw you fall in love with her, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I can’t wait to spend the rest of our days together, skipping the jump cut scenes, running into figurative and real battles, and trading weapons or stories about our days. I promise to always watch your back, in any time, place or reality. You’re my fantasy man, come to life, and I’m so thankful to have met you.