Original Wedding Vows

Original Wedding Vows in 12 Steps

Each of you should begin writing your Original Wedding Vows alone.

1.  Write a list of the qualities you love in your soon-to-be husband or wife.
2.  Write a list of the promises that you would like to make.
3.  Read the pages of this website and other websites about Wedding Vows to get more ideas, and list the ideas you liked best.
4.  Exchange and read each others’ lists that you wrote in the above steps.

Then it’s time to work on your Original Wedding Vows together with your future spouse.

5.  What did you and your fiance have in common on the lists you each wrote in steps 1 through 3?
6.  What did each of you like about the other one’s lists that was different from your own lists?
7.  Talk over each of the items you found in steps 5 and 6.
8.  Decide whether you want to have the wedding officiant read the vows, and you just respond “I do” or whether you want to each read your own vows.
9.  Using the ideas you learned in all of the above steps, start to write out some possible Original Wedding Vows that you will use in your ceremony.
10.  Put this whole project aside for a week.  Don’t think about it.
11.  Again working alone, each of you review the vows you wrote a week ago and jot down some potential revisions or additions.
12.  Meet with your fiance again to go over your suggested changes.  Compromise on the details and perfect your Original Wedding Vows.

Original Wedding Vows – A Poem

Wedding Vows
     by  Nicholas Gordon

Because I love and cherish you,
And want to fill your heart with grace,
These things I promise I will do:

I vow to tell you what is true
That you might touch whom you embrace
Because I love and cherish you.

I vow to put aside my view
And paint my portrait from your place:
These things I promise I will do.

And when you must your dreams renew,
I vow to give you ample space
Because I love and cherish you.

I vow to make our battles few
And love the child behind the face:
These things I promise I will do.

And that we might make one of two,
Too deep to know, too vast to trace,
Because I love and cherish you,
These things I promise I will do.

2. These things I promise I will do
That life may grant you ample grace
Because I love and cherish you:

I vow to treasure what is true
That I might touch whom I embrace:
These things I promise I will do.

I'll build a garden in your view
That with sweet fruit will stone replace
Because I love and cherish you.

I vow to love each day anew,
For love must dance through time and space:
These things I promise I will do.

I vow to make your terrors few
And then with you those demons face
Because I love and cherish you.

And now, as we make one of two,
A passage we cannot retrace,
These things I promise I will do
Because I love and cherish you.