Call me a softy, but I absolutely love this part of the ceremony! Your wedding vows can be the most personal and sacred part of your wedding ceremony. I often refer to them as the “sweet spot” in the ceremony, and I love to encourage and inspire my couples to write their own. Writing your own allows you to say what you want, from the heart, using words and language that is real and authentic to you.

The vows consist of two sections, the legal vow and your personal vow. The legal vow, must be said verbatim, as per Section 45 of The Marriage Act, and goes like this: “I ask everyone here to witness that I ____________ take you __________ to be my lawful wedded wife/husband/partner in marriage.”

Then, in addition to this you can add your own personal vows.

For many people, that thought can be overwhelming, so I have created this document to help you, which includes some tips and ideas to help inspire you to write your very own wedding vows.

• Rule No 1 is “There are no rules!” So long as your vows come from the heart and say exactly what you want to say then you can’t get it wrong.
• Don’t procrastinate – start early and not the night before.
• Before you start, make a plan. Sit down with your partner and discuss how you see your wedding vows going. Nobody wants one persons vows to be hilarious and the other persons to be a real tear jerker. Similarly, you don’t want one persons to be extremely lengthy and the other persons to be short and sweet. So sit down and chat to each other about the length and the tone that you want to set in your vows. Check in with each other as to whether or not you want to use humour?
• Do you want to read each others or not? And if not, then that’s ok too, just make sure you are both on the same page when it comes to the tone and length of your vow.
• Borrow ideas – Sometimes our creative juices simply need a little help so you can jump on google or you can check out my pinterest page where I keep adding loads of great ideas to inspire you to write your own wedding vows. You can also click here to download some sample vows that may just inspire you and help you get started.
• Still stuck? The following questions may help to get you started:
  – Why am I marrying this person?
  – What do I love about them?
  – How do they make me feel?
  – What have they brought into my life?
  – What do I promise for our future?
  – Why am I excited to be spending the rest of my life with them?

I then get all my couples to email me their vows about a week out from their wedding day, so that I can print them on my beautiful vow cards. This  always looks great on the day and it saves you having to remember to bring your vows with you – trust me, there’s enough to worry about on the day without having to remember that.