Oct 4, 2011
I love your blog. I wish I had found it sooner before I went through the stages of wedding planning....(excitement, inspiration, planning, sticker shock, disbelief, anger, a sense of failure that I don't want to craft every (or any) part of my wedding, then just relaxing about it and realizing it's our awesome party and nobody's judging it). I could have gotten to the end part faster.
Anyhow, my FH and I are getting married next month, we've planned a laid back, backyard-dinner-party-after-a-short-ceremony type wedding in a rented mid-century-modern house in Palm Springs. Most all of it's planned to the extent it's going to be, except our vows. Neither of us are religious, our friend who's a bit of a ham is marrying us and while I want to keep things lighthearted I also want to convey the gravity of what we're doing.
We have no idea where to look for inspiration on vows. I've only found cheesy inspiration through my internet searches, I'm not sure where to turn to. My FH is very quiet by nature and while I'm more of a talker the idea of standing in front of 60 people and saying the most important promise I'll make gives me HUGE stage fright. I tear up during a good movie montage I'm sure I'll be a wreck walking down the aisle.
Where can I find inspiration for simple, short, sweet, heartfelt vows? Everything but this has already been planned and this is the most important part. We are kind of winging the day-of stuff since it's such a small, casual event but I don't want to be winging out wedding vows because we couldn't find anything we thought suited us. Any ideas or direction-pointing would be SUPER appreciated!
*****
Jan 4, 2012
whoops i guess i blew this one.
how did it go?????????????
*****
Haha! Thanks for getting back to me. It went great!
It was pouring rain and it let up for a few minutes so we all ran out in the backyard and had literally a 3 minute ceremony before it started pouring rain again. That day was a huge lesson in not being able to plan everything out to the smallest detail like the control freak I am and having it turn out awesome no matter what.
Instead of a backyard dinner party we crammed everyone under the carport and although it sounds weird it was so intimate and beautiful.
PS...being married is WAAAY more fun than being engaged.
XO
*****
What was your favorite vow?
*****
This is what we said:
I, Jason - take you Beatrix to be the wife of my days / the companion of my house / the friend of my life /
We shall bear together / whatever trouble and sorrow / life may lay upon us /
And we shall share together / whatever good and joyful things / life may bring us /
With these words / and all the words of my heart / I marry you / and bind my life to yours.
The last sentence was my favorite part, I totally had to keep it together just to get through it.
♥
(Photos by Alders Photography)
Um ... you wrote these? Yourself? I'm tearing up. And stealing them for myself and Husband Elect in t-minus 135 days. I hope that is okay.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't entirely, we can't take credit for writing them. Jason found them and I don't know where he found them and there were no credits on the vows. We took part of it and improvised part of it. We were so happy to have found something that suited us and was so heartfelt and we are so happy to share what we found.
DeleteSo wonderful! I have been rolling them around in my brain all morning. Thank you so much for sharing such a beautiful, personal, and very meaningful wedding celebration of two obviously lovely people.
Deletei'm crying.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! Thanks for sharing! Totally tearing up.
ReplyDeleteWe found some great non-religious/ egalitarian vows at Interfaithfamilies.com
Errr those vows are pretty fantastic. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteWow those are some great vows. I'm a little choked up. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteLove this.
ReplyDeleteLove these vows and totes hijacking them for my ceremony!
ReplyDeleteI love these and am stealing them too! ESB- thank you so much for posting this. I've been looking for non-cheese non-religious vow inspiration and there is NOTHIGN out there! Another post on this topic would be rad.
ReplyDeleteLove these vows, and in fact used a variation on them for my own wedding a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteNo longer recall exactly where I first encountered them, but versions of this are floating around the interwebs.
Wow, yep, with you on that last line! I got all weepy just reading it - don't think I would've managed to get it all out before I lost it!!! Congratulations on being married, I agree, it really does rock. And congrats on finding such awesome vows.
ReplyDeleteADORABLE. way to go, youz guyz.
ReplyDeletewhat she said.
Deletep.s. THREADZZZZZZZ
right? but now they fucked the permalinks for comments. LAMESAUCE.
DeletePerfect! My celebrant is trying to persuade us that a "wine ceremony" where she mixes a glass of wine (symbolising a delicate, fragrant wife wtf) with a glass of merlot (strong husband wtf) to create a MEGABLEND of wine is a good idea. Um, no one messes with my wine! I love what you guys did, congratulations :)
ReplyDeleteI've had friends do this and it fit them, but's SO not me and sounds not YOU either.
DeleteIt's hard to find good info for constructing your ceremony. There were a couple of threads on APW that I liked (here's one), and Kathryn has some good info and links on her site (Snippet & Ink).
ReplyDeleteOur vows and ceremony were specific to us, so not that helpful for others, but we had 3 AWESOME readings that I thought I'd share. We found them via this great post from this bride, and you can read them in full there.
Near the beginning of the ceremony, one of my best friends read "Superbly Situated" and then one of MK's read "Litany." At the end (before my uncle pronounced us married), our friend Sara, who we met through, read "The Master Speed."