Uncategorized: Tips for Non-Writers for Writing Your Wedding Vows

Don’t Use ChatGPT To Write Your Wedding Vows:

Tips for Non-Writers for Writing Your Wedding Vows 

 

 

I stumbled upon a Reddit thread recently wherein someone posted about finding out that her husband-to-be used ChatGPT to write his vows. “I feel disappointed. Like he doesn’t think this is important or personal. Am I overreacting?”

I understand the pressure of writing the perfect vows. You want to be everything at once: charming, funny, sweet, intellectual. 

Writing is difficult. We write a lot in school, and a lot of us just stop afterward and lose those skills. It may be tempting to utilize AI for this process, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is unoriginal, and a bad note to start your marriage off on. Even if you’re both cool with it, it may be worth considering whether you feel it is just something you need to check off your list (in which case, why do it?). 

I am no writing expert (you’re reading my blog. You’re aware), but I DID have a friend copy phrases of my vows during their wedding– which was a huge compliment. Below are my top tips for writing personal, compelling, beautiful vows– even if you aren’t a writer. 

 

Decide if You’ll Read them Privately or at your Ceremony 

 

MOST of my couples now read their vows privately, after their first look. Discuss whether this feels right to you. 

I personally chose to do them in front of all of my guests at my ceremony. I wanted the ceremony to feel like a community summit, where everyone could participate and help us uphold our vows after our wedding. 

 

Don’t Improvise 

I’ve seen this done, and it feels awkward for guests because it seems like no effort was made or much thought was put into this. 

 

Start Early 

Starting a year before your wedding, keep a Note on your phone with little things they’ve said, quotes from your favorite authors or movies that remind you of them, or things you want in your marriage. 

 

Read and Research 

Read other people’s vows online. Read love poems. (Here’s a favorite.)

 

Deep Dive 

Tom went to our local bar (s/o to the Old Northender) to write his vows. He’d roll up, order a pint, and take out his little field notebook to hand write. He used these blocks of time as a serious opportunity for introspection. He deeply considered what he wanted in a marriage, and what he could promise to me in it. 

I highly recommend this practice. Going somewhere special, or making the writing process a ritual, will enable you to really dig in and pour your heart out. Don’t worry about editing at this stage; just get it all down. 

 

Compare with Your Partner 

Make sure your timing is about the same as your partners. You don’t want to be a lot shorter or longer than they are. 

 

Remember to VOW

An error I see is the vow portion of the ceremony being a lot of sweet memories and personality traits that my couple loves about each other. But they don’t get to the PROMISES part. The vows are an integral portion of the ceremony so that you have witnesses helping you and reminding you of the promises you made to each other, throughout your entire marriage. 

 

Edit Edit Edit (And Don’t Use Vocab You Wouldn’t Use)

Later, you’ll want to edit. You’ll structure it in a way that flows. I’d suggest this framework: 

-start with a sweet memory or quote

-followed by WHY you want to make promises to them

-add in the vows

-end with another sweet anecdote, or perhaps what you’re most looking forward to in your marriage. 

I would take this opportunity to delete words that don’t sound like words you would use. (People will think you paid someone or used AI to write them.) Deleting cliched language is a good idea, too. 

 

Don’t Avoid Crying 

Don’t avoid topics or words just because you know you’ll get emotional. Isn’t that the point? 

 

Utilize your Smart Friends 

I am lucky to have a lot of writers in my circle, and if I hadn’t been so secretive about my vows, I would have asked them to edit for me. 

 

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My Vows to Tom: 

 

Tom, 

 

The first person in space said, “All my life now appears to be one happy moment.” 

 

That’s how I feel right now, standing here in front of you and our closest people. 

 

 Today, our wedding day, eclipses anything I’ve ever felt, your presence in my life has changed me forever.

 

In 2021, I was diagnosed with panic disorder. It was debilitating and very strange. 

Later that summer, I met you and felt love at first sight. And I noticed your bicep tattoo that reads, DON’T PANIC. 

A quote from your favorite childhood book to you;  a harbinger of true love to me. Concrete evidence of Plato’s Symposium – the “matching half of a human whole”–was right there, written on your arm. 

 

You were eerily familiar to me the moment I first saw you. It felt like we’d recognized each other from a past life. The seismic shift of our meet-cute rendered a feeling inside of me: I knew and loved you fully in that exact moment. (We weren’t even on any drugs.) I felt rooted to the ground underneath me for the first time in my life. There was comfort in this bizarre adventure.

 

All at once, I knew your zany quirks, restless spirit, empathetic world view, and your devotion to me. I knew in my heart that I had found my life’s purpose, which is to love you. 

 

I remember sharing a cigarette with you in an alleyway at 1am on a Tuesday shortly after we’d met. We were telling each other we didn’t want to grow up. That we were Peter Pan. We thought that growing up meant a sacrifice of fun, adventure, and spontaneity, and a submission to convention. Now, I find the same pleasure in going on an overseas adventure with you, that I do from watching grass grow in our new yard. Growing up with you means it ALL excites me. I’m not afraid anymore, and in fact, I couldn’t be more fulfilled. 

My promises to you: 

I love the way that a chubby squirrel or a bright color can evoke wonder to you. I vow to always wonder. 

I vow to keep learning with you.

I vow to love your many sides.

The way you listen to me with your full attention makes me feel cherished. I vow to listen to you with my full attention too. 

I vow to grow radically and work toward a more beautiful world with you.

I vow to take care of you, in sickness and in health. 

I love the way you argue. We don’t fight often, but when we do, your heart is so open. I vow to try to be like you in these moments.

I vow to be faithful to you.

I vow to put our marriage first above all things and cherish it like the weird perfect egg that it is. 

I promise these things in this life and all the lives we will lead together.  

 

Thank you for giving me your last name, and for taking mine.  I love you. 

 

Tom’s Vows: 

 

My darling,

 

From the moment we met we were exactly where we were meant to be. Together, as we have always been and always will be. From the moment I found you, I became who I was always meant to be. I learned in that moment what it is to be fully human. 

 

Our journey has been one of infinite possibilities, all of them correct, all of them as full and exciting and giving and fulfilling as the last. There can be no misstep, the journey can only be right as we do it as one being. 

 

The love we have is of incredible lightness. We float through life, untethered to anything but each other. But with this lightness comes an incredible responsibility to nurture something so rare and precious. 

Nurturing our love is my life’s purpose. 

I promise to you my darling, nothing is more important than us. Nothing takes precedence or attention over how we are and where we are. This comes before all. The world could collapse around us and the only thing that would matter is our wellbeing and connection. Everything else is just details. 

I promise that no matter what, it is you that comes first, regardless of circumstance or environment or external distractions. We take every journey together, because any journey without you would lead to an outcome we didn’t share, half achieved and empty of what truly matters. 

I promise to you my darling that every day is Tammie Day. This could be a day of great discovery or achievement or it could be a day of grit and labor or sorrow and loss. No matter which way the day goes we will be silly and sweet and loving and soft and it will be Tammie Day. 

I promise to you my darling, that no matter what I will be forever on your side. There is no person, ideology, opinion, or event that I will ever give preference to over your point of view or experience. You are forever in the right and I will defend that to the death or ruination. My darling, I trust you implicitly always always always. 

I promise to you my darling that I will always share every aspect of my life and be unsatiating in learning all aspects of yours. Every thought, every passing whimsy want or need that crosses my mind, I will bring to you for deliberation, conversation,and review. And I will forever want to know exactly what you are thinking feeling, or yearning for. I want to know it all as you want to know all of me. 

I promise to you my darling that I will always strive to make our life fuller and more complete. I could have died happy the moment I met you, but so long as we walk this path I will always try to expand the expandable, to create comfort and greater warmth in the place we live, and always work on increasing our happiness in whatever form that may take. 

 

I love you Annie, I love you more than these thousands of words can say, I love you in a way that can only be experienced and never articulated. 

 

My life is yours and my purpose is only for you to feel the full weight of my being set on yours, forever entwined, forever cherished, forever as one. 

 

Annie Maire Evenlyn Mientka-Proctor: I love you. In every way that is possible. Being in your presence is the only place I ever want to be. Loving you is all I ever want to do. No Takesies Backsies.

Photos by Best Side Captures.