Your vows are the beating heart of your wedding, literally “the reason we are all gathered here today”. Without these commitments made with the promise to live them each and every day, it’s just a party!
If you’ve found this post because you’re ready to write your own wedding vows and need some inspiration, we’re here to help! Even if you know you want to say something different to the traditional vows, it’s not always easy to put your feelings into words.
From the simple to the poetic, these modern wedding vows are some of the most beautiful non-traditional and non-religious declarations of love spoken by couples during their wedding ceremonies. We hope this collection sparks some ideas for you. While love is as old as time, your promises to each other don’t have to be!
Want to write your own wedding vows but don’t know where to start, what to include and most importantly, how to make it sound good? Our step-by-step guide How to Write Your Personal Wedding Vows contains EVERY vow starter and thought prompter you need to draw the words out of your heart and on to paper (no generic promises here!). In an hour you’ll have your own heartstring-tugging wedding vows that will make you both laugh and cry.
“I’m SO happy with the vows I wrote using this guide. I loved that the words were coming from me, instead of the internet. I felt like they couldn’t have been written for anyone else but us. And best of all, they made my partner laugh!”
Continue This Adventure
I promise to always care for you, connect with you, comfort you and celebrate with you. I will be by your side through whatever life may bring and cherish the time we have together. I feel lucky to have found someone who embraces all that I am and enriches my life in so many ways. The values, dreams and plans we share make me excited for our future. I can’t wait to continue this adventure with you.
No Other Than Yourself
I choose you to be no other than yourself, loving what I know of you and trusting what I do not yet know. I promise to laugh with you when times are good and endure with you when times are bad. I respect you as an individual, a partner, and an equal. You are my best friend and I promise to love you always.
The Way You Are
I promise to accept you the way you are. I fell in love with your qualities, your quirks and your outlook on life. I promise to respect you as a person with your own interests, desires and needs, and to realise that those are sometimes different, but no less important, than my own. I promise to join with you and to share all that is to come, to give and to receive, to speak and to listen. With kindness, honesty and trust, I will work by your side to create a wonderful life together.
You Are My Reason
You were my reason back then, my reason now, my reason every day. You make me feel happier than I could ever imagine and more loved than I ever thought possible. I pledge my life to yours, to share both good times and bad times side by side. No matter where life leads me, I know that as long as you are there, it is where I am meant to be.
Now and Forevermore
I promise to be a true and faithful partner, from this day forward, in all life’s circumstances, as we face them together. In the joys and sorrows, the good times and bad, in sickness or in health, I will always be there for you, to comfort you, love you, honour and cherish you, now and forevermore.
NOW READ: How to Write Personal Wedding Vows That Say Everything You Feel
A Life We Both Dream of Living
You are my best friend. I love you with all my heart and stand here before all of our friends and family, on this the happiest day of my life. I want nothing more than to share my future with you – my triumphs and my challenges, my joys and my sorrows. Together, I know we can accomplish the life we both dream of living.
I Choose You
There are three words that are stronger than I love you. Today I stand in front of you to say, ‘I choose you’. I choose you over all others. I choose you to share happiness with. I choose you to care for. I choose you to have a family with. I choose you to grow with. I choose you to love forever.
My Love, My Life
With my whole heart, I take you as my partner, acknowledging your strengths and accepting your faults, as you do mine. I will be yours in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in failure and in triumph. I promise to be faithful and supportive and to make our love and happiness a priority. You are my person, my love and my life, today and always.
In All Things for All Days
I promise to be your lover, companion, and friend. I will be your comrade in adventure, your accomplice in mischief, your comfort in disappointment, your strength in times of need and your partner in all things, for all the days of my life.
I Give to You Today
Today I give you my hand and my heart. I promise to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle. I promise to love you in good times and in bad, when life seems easy and when it seems hard, when our love is simple, and when it is an effort. I promise to cherish you and to always hold you in the highest regard. These things I give to you today and every day, a commitment made in love, kept in faith, and eternally made new.
I’m So Lucky You’re Mine
I didn’t need someone to complete me, I needed someone to accept me completely and you are that someone. You make me unbelievably proud and I promise that I will make you proud. I vow to listen to you and learn from you. I vow to laugh with you and cry with you. I vow to value our differences just as much as our common ground. On good days or bad days, rain or shine, I’ll love you forever and I’m so lucky you’re mine.
These Promises are Privileges
I see these vows not as promises but as privileges. I get to laugh with you and cry with you, care for you and share with you. I get to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t have to honour and cherish you – I get to. And that is the greatest gift.
Completely and Forever
I promise to give you the best of myself and to ask of you no more than you can give. I promise to respect you as your own person and to realize that your interests, desires and needs are no less important than my own. I promise to share with you my time and my attention and to bring joy, strength and imagination to our relationship. I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you see through the window of my world into my innermost fears and feelings, secrets and dreams. I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face changes in order to keep our relationship alive and exciting. I promise to love you in good times and in bad, with all I have to give and all I feel inside in the only way I know how. Completely and forever. – I Promise by Dorothy R Colgan
When I Am With You
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. – Roy Croft
From This Day Forward
With this ring, I give you my promise, that from this day forward you shall not walk alone. May my heart be your shelter and my arms be your home. – Marianne Williamson
Today I Marry My Best Friend
Today I marry my best friend, the one I have laughed with and cried with, the one I have learned from and shared with, the one I have chosen to support, encourage and give myself to through all the days given us to share. Today I marry the one I love. – Bertrand Russell
The Meaning of ‘I Love You’
‘I love you’ means that I accept you for the person that you are and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. ‘I love you’ means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. – Jonathan Safran Foer
Through Each Tomorrow
I cannot promise you a life of sunshine, I cannot promise riches, wealth, or gold, I cannot promise you an easy pathway, that leads away from change or growing old. But I can promise all my heart’s devotion, a smile to chase away your tears of sorrow, a love that’s ever true and ever growing, a hand to hold in yours through each tomorrow. – These I Can Promise by Mark Twain
My Favourite Person
I cannot promise never to be angry, I cannot promise always to be kind. You know what you are taking on, my darling – it’s only at the start that love is blind. And yet I’m still the one you want to be with, and you’re the one for me – of that I’m sure. You are my closest friend, my favourite person, the lover and the home I’ve waited for. I cannot promise that I will deserve you. From this day on, I hope to pass that test. I love you and I want to make you happy. I promise I will do my very best. – A Vow by Wendy Cope
Inside Your Heart
I belong in your arms. Finally, I have found a place into which I fit perfectly, safely and securely with no doubts, no fears, no sadness, no tears. This place is filled with happiness and laughter, yet it is spacious enough to allow me the freedom to move around, to live my life and be myself. This wonderful place, which I never believed really existed, I have found finally. Inside your arms, inside your heart, inside your love. – I Belong in Your Arms by Deborah Bridea
How to Write Your Own Wedding Vows
Your wedding vows are a public love letter to your partner. It doesn’t matter if the words you choose are serious, sentimental or a little bit silly. What matters is that they’re true to your personality and relationship.
Whether you’re inspired to write a few sentences or a few paragraphs to convey what this next step in your journey together looks like, we can help you get those words flowing freely.
The hundreds of questions, prompts and ideas in How to Write Your Personal Wedding Vows will help you tell your love story in your own words to make your vows truly special. There’s no other guide that makes it THIS easy to express what you’re feeling in your heart.
“I wish I had this guide when I was writing my vows! It’s super easy to follow and there are so many great ideas. They would’ve taken me way less time to write and been even more personalised.”
You’ll revisit cherished memories from your relationship, revel in the love that brought you to this point and explore your hopes and dreams for your future together. How to Write Your Personal Wedding Vows will take you on this journey and bring you to your destination, your wedding day, where you share your promises with the one you love.