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Every once in while, we notice a particular topic that has a crazy spike — it's the phrase that most brides are searching for. Or it's the topic that's suddenly pinned everywhere. It's the topic that basically dominates our most-read posts for the month. This month? That trending topic is VOWS.
How to write your wedding vows
We've got a ton of great posts about writing your wedding vows, and more generally, how to structure your ceremony. Check out a few of these:
- How to write heartfelt, sniffle-worthy wedding vows: five quick tips to making the magic happen.
- Wedding Ceremony 101: A brilliant primer on how to build a ceremony from scratch that reflects you and your partner
- 5 steps to getting over your wedding vow writer's block: Ugh, writing important things is HARD!
- Wedding vows for blended families: Great ideas for involving kids from prior relationships in your wedding
Cute twists on vows
Because sometimes you just want to make your vows feel a little bit off-kilter, y'know? Here are a few ideas…
- Nerd up your vows with a little audience participation (because isn't “…AND MY AXE!” perfect for a wedding ceremony?)
- How to make your own Mad Libs wedding vows
- Seal your vows with a pinkie-swear!
- Do rock-paper-scissors to see who does their vows first.
Examples of other people's vows
[When it comes to writing your vows, sometimes you just need to glean a little inspiration from the Offbeat Wed readers who've come before you:
- Steal These Vows: Dozens of examples of amazing vows in real offbeat weddings.
- So many vow examples on our Ceremony ideas and wedding vows repository board on Pinterest.
- Pages and pages and pages of real offbeat weddings featuring the couples' real vows: read our vows archive!
So far my couples have only done the “repeat-after-the-minister” vows…just as beautiful as any other, but I’m looking forward to hearing individualized vows in the future!
I *love* the cue cards! That’s awesome!
I just emailed my fiance to suggest a thumb war to decide who goes first. We’ve always done thumb wars (and he ALWAYS wins–so he’s first!) so it’s more personal for us than rock paper scissors. I think it’d be a nice way to lighten things up a bit!
There’s also always the option to do traditional vows! We slightly modified the traditional Quaker vows to remove references to God (we’re a Quaker/agnostic couple), and it was tremendous to say the same thing that so many members of his family have said over the years:
“In the presence of these our family and friends, I, Emmy, take thee, James, to be my husband, promising to be unto thee a loving and faithful wife as long as we both shall live.”
We’re also using vows we didn’t write. It’s a ceremony my great grandfather wrote, and that my grandparents and parents used. Which I think is totally beautiful, and also kind of a relief because the idea of writing my own vows never appealed to me much. Our love is private, darnit! And I’d just feel so much pressure for them to be eloquent and perfect, it wouldn’t be fun.
Thank you for this post! My future husband and I know we want to write our own vows and do the traditonal vows. We’re 10 months away from the wedding and he says he already has his almost done….I don’t know if I should be impressed or concerned. And to be honest, I totally saved one of the vow templates fellow bride posted here. THANK YOU
My fiance and I are doing a mixed bag of sorts- traditional (reform) Jewish ceremony and vows (not very “us”, but his family sort of insisted) but I’ve managed to wriggle in some Celtic vows that mean a lot to me as well. It’s a fine line to walk with a such a rigid ceremony, but after reading this I may try to sneak in a pinkie swear as well!
how did I not realize OBB had a pintrest of it’s own until 2 months AFTER my wedding. lol
Gasp! I don’t know! It’s right there in the sidebar of every page… 🙂