Your pastor or priest will have the traditional Christian marriage vows handy, so will any other person you have officiate. If you and your intended are from separate faiths, you can get together will the person performing the service and write a combination of both religions. This should keep both families happy.
If, however, you and your fiancée want to write your own, that is becoming the more common way to recite the marriage vows. Perhaps there are special promises that you want to make to each other. Each of you will want to take some time and write them out yourselves, and then go over them with your pastor. Remember that these vows are supposed to last a lifetime, so give writing them the attention that they deserve.
You can include humor, excerpts from old love letters you’ve written to each other, even ancient French poetry, if you’d like.
The word ”vow” means “promise made unconditionally” and is traditionally made in front of at least two witnesses. Once upon a time, this meant simply the person officiating and god, but now, at least in the United States, these vows must be said in the presence of two human witnesses, usually the couple’s best friends.
You can recite them together, at the same time, or go for the more traditional way with the groom going first.
The shortest and quickest way to take legal vows is to have the officiate ask’ ‘Do you, (name) take (name) to be your(wife/husband) to be your ( wife/husband) for now and for as long as you both shall live?” With the person simply answering “I do.” This type of vow taking is usually done in cases where the legal part of the marriage needs to be done quickly, as in Las Vegas or your local courthouse.
Becoming very popular is the endearment letter vow, ones written like love letters and read to each other before the congregation. This is where each of you get to make solemn promises, and can be written as poetry or like an actual letter, the recipient may want to keep the letter after it has been read out loud, and it makes for a very special keepsake of that day, even more so than the piece of cake you’re going to freeze and eat on your first wedding anniversary.
If you want to begin a tradition for your family, you might want to see if you can get a copy of the same vows taken by one or both of your parents. Taking both copies of yours and his parents vows and combining them into your own vows-to be passed down to your children as they marry, is a wonderful way to start your own family tradition.
You might want to research your options further, so as to be very traditional or extremely non traditional, and you can find over 150 types of marriage vows by visiting www.chicagomarriage.com or simply typing ”marriage vows” into your search engine.