wedding vows

Your wedding vows are the heart of your wedding, the most important and partnership-solidifying element of your wedding ceremony.  Here at our New Jersey wedding venue and at our garden weddings, we’ve heard some beautiful, sentimental wedding vows, and we’ve laughed along with the bride, groom and their guests at that little touch of humor that reflects the couple’s fun-loving partnership.

Great wedding vows capture your promises to one another, and tell all of your guests what you love about one another. Writing your own vows can be a daunting task, so use our top tips here to guide you:

1. Decide if you’ll write one set of wedding vows that you’ll both repeat to one another, or if you’ll each write your own vows privately, ‘surprising’ one another with your heartfelt words during the ceremony.

2. Take some time together to discuss what the core values of your relationship are — honesty, support, patience, kindness, loyalty, friendship – and use those keywords to create your promises to one another, as in “I promise to spend every day supporting your wishes, goals and dreams.”

3. Use your own voice in your wedding vows. How do you speak? Are you naturally humorous? If so, then add some of your personality to your vows. It’s not you if the words you choose sound like someone else wrote them, or are too formal, or too serious.

4. Is there a quote, scripture, poem or psalm that has always been central to your relationship? If so, build your vows around that theme and grow it from there.

5. See the future. Your relationship will take you places you cannot even imagine, and the point of professing wedding vows to one another is to face the future together, whatever it might bring. Your vows are promises to be faithful and to enrich each other’s lives not just now, but always.

6. Build from traditional wedding vow wording. If you love the traditional ‘love, honor and cherish’ vows, by all means include them. Many of our New Jersey brides and grooms start their vows with the traditional vows script, then add their own personalized ‘second half’ with their additional promises or a touch of humor.

7. Write a first draft, not censoring yourself. Just write and write, not worrying about length, and then you can edit your script down from there, keeping the ‘gold’ of your vow wording and cutting away what’s excess.

8. Read your vows out loud as you go. That’s the only way to tell if your vow wording sounds natural in your own voice.

9. Don’t be afraid of tears. Heartfelt, sentimental promises, plus the deep love you feel for your partner, are sure to get you misty-eyed, and that’s a very special part of a wedding ceremony. So don’t put pressure on yourself not to cry.

10. Write out your vows. You don’t have to memorize them. Print them out in full on an index card, and your officiant can lead you through them, or you can read them right off the page as so many other brides and grooms have done to get their wedding vows just right.

If there’s something you wish to express that’s not a natural fit for your wedding vows, include that private sentiment in a letter or card you send to your partner on the morning of the wedding.

Best,

Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, pleasantdale Chsteau

Your wedding vows are the heart of your wedding, the most important and partnership-solidifying element of your wedding ceremony. Here at our New Jersey wedding venue and at our garden weddings, we’ve heard some beautiful, sentimental wedding vows, and we’ve laughed along with the bride, groom and their guests at that little touch of humor that reflects the couple’s fun-loving partnership.

Great wedding vows capture your promises to one another, and tell all of your guests what you love about one another. Writing your own vows can be a daunting task, so use our top tips here to guide you:

1. Decide if you’ll write one set of wedding vows that you’ll both repeat to one another, or if you’ll each write your own vows privately, ‘surprising’ one another with your heartfelt words during the ceremony.

2. Take some time together to discuss what the core values of your relationship are — honesty, support, patience, kindness, loyalty, friendship – and use those keywords to create your promises to one another, as in “I promise to spend every day supporting your wishes, goals and dreams.”

3. Use your own voice in your wedding vows. How do you speak? Are you naturally humorous? If so, then add some of your personality to your vows. It’s not you if the words you choose sound like someone else wrote them, or are too formal, or too serious.

4. Is there a quote, scripture, poem or psalm that has always been central to your relationship? If so, build your vows around that theme and grow it from there.

5. See the future. Your relationship will take you places you cannot even imagine, and the point of professing wedding vows to one another is to face the future together, whatever it might bring. Your vows are promises to be faithful and to enrich each other’s lives not just now, but always.

6. Build from traditional wedding vow wording. If you love the traditional ‘love, honor and cherish’ vows, by all means include them. Many of our New Jersey brides and grooms start their vows with the traditional vows script, then add their own personalized ‘second half’ with their additional promises or a touch of humor.

7. Write a first draft, not censoring yourself. Just write and write, not worrying about length, and then you can edit your script down from there, keeping the ‘gold’ of your vow wording and cutting away what’s excess.

8. Read your vows out loud as you go. That’s the only way to tell if your vow wording sounds natural in your own voice.

9. Don’t be afraid of tears. Heartfelt, sentimental promises, plus the deep love you feel for your partner, are sure to get you misty-eyed, and that’s a very special part of a wedding ceremony. So don’t put pressure on yourself not to cry.

10. Write out your vows. You don’t have to memorize them. Print them out in full on an index card, and your officiant can lead you through them, or you can read them right off the page as so many other brides and grooms have done to get their wedding vows just right.

If there’s something you wish to express that’s not a natural fit for your wedding vows, include that private sentiment in a letter or card you send to your partner on the morning of the wedding.

Best,
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Château

Renewing Wedding Vows

Every so often, celebrity couples grab the headlines for renewing their wedding vows, sometimes just a few months after their splashy wedding celebrations. Recently, Khloe Kardashian Odom and her husband Lamar Odom were reported to have renewed their wedding vows, and other stars such as Heidi Klum and Seal have made it a tradition to renew their wedding vows every year, sometimes in creative theme celebrations.

While celebrities often drive wedding trends, their example in the world of renewing wedding vows has become a bit confusing to couples. So to clear away that confusion, here are some reasons why renewing vows is so popular right now:

• Renewing wedding vows re-connects couples, especially if they’ve had a challenging year for any reason – a health crisis, financial stress, job search struggles, a move to a new city, what have you

• Renewing wedding vows allows couples to celebrate milestone anniversaries – the 1st, 5th, 10th, or more – as well as any anniversary they choose. So a 7th anniversary is completely welcoming of a celebration

• Renewing wedding vows allows couples to plan their wedding ‘re-do’ their way, which is quite wonderful for those who were perhaps unhappy with how their original weddings turned out, or whose parents overtook the plans

• Renewing wedding vows gives military couples the chance to celebrate their appreciation of one another before or after a deployment

• Renewing wedding vows serves as a wonderful example to the younger generations of what a positive, successful marriage looks like

• Renewing wedding vows may be done privately, just the two of you on a beach or mountaintop, or it might be a large family and friend gathering in a ballroom

• Renewing wedding vows allows you to show appreciation for your spouse, a healthy element of a strong marriage

In these challenging times, so many people want something cheery to look forward to and enjoy, and a wedding vow renewal provides exactly that.

Best,
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Château