Writing Your Own
Marriage Vows
Frequently couples who come to work with me end up planning to marry, and wanting-- understandably-- to do a good job doing it. After all the careful consideration they have given their relationship, they look for the best ways to articulate aloud their hard-won commitment-- and to celebrate the marriage that they envision-- by carefully planning out their wedding ceremony. Helping them do this (and in many cases officiating at the ceremony for them) has become one of my most favorite things to do. The following was written to help develop the vows that they exchange, which are central to the celebration.
In order to prepare for your wedding day, give careful thought to the writing of your own vows, for they are the essence of the ceremony, and the sum and substance of the marriage that your wedding will establish in your community. Begin with a journal of the relationship, in one of those attractive blank books available for the purpose of personal diaries; but make this one for the two of you to share-- and begin sharing it. After the wedding you may take turns writing in the book, to air your thoughts and to respond to one another's feelings in a more deliberate way than usually happens during spontaneous and casual-- often somewhat thoughtless-- conversation.
A dialogue will develop in this book over the weeks and months as you prepare your wedding, a dialogue that will deepen a caring and trusting communication. Over the years of the life you share, it will become an extremely valued document that faithfully chronicles the changes that take place in the relationship, while safeguarding the integrity of those changes. In time this book will become sacred to your marriage, and so of course should never be read by any other person.
Sit together at the kitchen table and write an introduction to the book. Note the date, place and circumstances that brought you together to begin it, and write reminiscences of how you had met, your first impressions of one another, and a brief history of how you came to sit together at this time to plan your marriage.
An exciting thing to do is to assemble a list of things upon which you agree, and make this page (or these pages) in the book something you can add to over time. This is not to be a set of compromises that you are willing to agree to, in order to share a life together, but rather a list of the similarities of beliefs and values that you have found you hold in common. This list can develop into a vision statement (a "Credo & Covenant") that reflects the qualities of the home you hope to build together.
As you will gradually discover, such a list will provide the emotional ballast you need to navigate those areas in life that inevitably come when you discover some significant disagreement between you. At those times it is altogether too easy to forget how much fundamental agreement there is to your relationship, and how much hard occasional weather it can withstand, given a flexible vessel and a temperate climate.
On separate pieces of paper begin writing down the things you are grateful for in yourself, the qualities that you take pleasure in and enjoy about yourself and the life you have lived so far. Begin a similar list about the person that you have chosen to marry, in which you describe the qualities that attract you and give you pleasure. Don't share these lists at first, let them develop thoughtfully, as gifts of insight and empathy that you will soon exchange, when they have ripened. When they are shared they may be rewritten into the book.
The traditional wedding vows speak of a relationship "to have and to hold" in a variety of ways; it is good to read as many of these as you can find so that you will come to understand the underlying meaning and value of what has been promised one another in the past by other couples.
As you consider these promises made by others, remember that the word "commitment" is commonly confused with the word "obligation"; many problems that develop in marriage can be traced back to this basic misunderstanding.
In promising to marry, we do not obligate ourselves to one another, we commit ourselves to ourselves in the presence of one another's respect and admiration. Our yearning to be together is not a need to be fulfilled by the other's wonderful qualities-- without which we might feel otherwise incomplete-- but an eager willingness to be inspired by one another, and to improve ourselves accordingly.
In brief, we are not here to teach, or to possess, but to learn and to become complete within ourselves. We are not here to change one another, but to mature within a trusting, loving companionship.
So what can you promise one another? --promise to give the things about yourselves that you enjoy, and to enjoy the things about the other that attract and inspire your love. Help each other to find the words that best describe these things you feel, and the words that best establish that atmosphere in the mind and heart of the one you marry.
And because these will be public vows, find the words that best tell of the quality of your commitment, that it can be understood and nourished by the community you will have gathered on your wedding day.
The writing of your vows will itself become emblematic of your marriage-- at once the test and proof of its eventual integrity. Enjoy the time you spend together doing it, and make of it at once the instrument and the celebration of your love.
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This article previously appeared in The Listener: volume two, issue two (Summer 1997).