Weddingbee Blog

I don’t mean it as a put down, but Mr. Lace is not a writer. It’s just not his thing. He’s magical when it comes to math, science, engineering and such, but he’s never loved writing. You can imagine my surprise when I (half) jokingly suggested having personal vows in our ceremony and he heartily agreed. The conversation went like this:

Me: You know, I was thinking, we should write personal vows in addition to our traditional vows. It will make our ceremony more personal and we’d get to say what we want to say to each other on our wedding day.

Mr. Lace: You’re right. That’s a good idea.

Me: (Blinking) You know you have to write them yourself.

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: And then you have to read them out loud in front of everyone.

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: And you still want to do it?

Mr. Lace: Yeah.

Me: (Thinking) Can I get this in writing?

Seriously, I was so happy that he agreed and made him promise not to back out.

Keep in mind, this conversation happened months before our wedding. So, for a long time, “write vows” was at the end of our to-do list. The month of the wedding rolled around and suddenly Mr. Lace started chickening out. But it wasn’t just him. I started chickening out, too! Neither of us really enjoys being the center of attention, so as our wedding approached, we started considering what writing personal vows would really require of us. After a long conversation, we decided to still write personal vows. After all, it was already printed in the program and on the day-of schedule.

Three weeks before the wedding, I started brainstorming ideas. What angle? What should I say? Will it sound cliche? What if Mr. Lace’s and my vows ended up being vastly different in tone and length? What if I went on and on about how wonderful he was and he wrote, “You’re cool.” As each week passed, I’d ask Mr. Lace if he had started and of course, he hadn’t. It was the week of the wedding and neither of us had nailed down our vows. Needless to say, I was stressed out. I decided that I’d sit down and write them in one day. I made sure I didn’t have any interruptions or appointments and began writing draft after draft until I felt that it was perfect. Of course, at the end of that day, I wasn’t completely happy with it and had to go back and revise it several times before I nailed down a final draft.

During this process, I thought, “if this is hard for me, this is going to be ridiculously hard for Mr. Lace since he doesn’t really like writing!” I hounded and pestered him about it. It was two days before the wedding and his vows still weren’t done. Instead, he had gone out to eat dinner with friends, watched several movies and documentaries, but none of his free time was devoted to writing vows! Naturally, we got into a fight two days before our wedding about how he didn’t care because he wasn’t putting forth much time and effort. I shared my worries about the vows being inconsistent in tone and length. The whole thing was stressing me out.

The next day, Mr. Lace and I had to prepare for the rehearsal so we met up early to run errands. As Mr. Lace was getting ready to go out, SIL Lace asked me if I had finished my vows. When I began telling her about the stress these vows had caused, SIL Lace said that Mr. Lace had stayed up till 4 AM working on his. He had taken out all the letters and cards I’d ever written to him and read through each one.

Hive, I felt so terrible. Why couldn’t I just trust that I would love whatever he wrote? Instead, I’d turned a reflective part of our wedding planning into something stressful. Mr. Lace came out with his vows and asked if I wanted to read them to make sure they were “okay.” I started crying as I apologized. He didn’t need my approval in his own expression of how he felt. He told me that it was okay, but after I had calmed down a bit he said, “No, but really. You always proofread all the writing I need to do. I want you to read it to see if it sounds okay.” I laughed, but insisted that I didn’t want to read it. Instead, we gave our vows to cousin Lace and asked her to read our vows to see what she thought.

It ended up being the most important and heartfelt part of our ceremony. As soon as Mr. Lace began reading, the tears came streaming down my face. I was a mess! By the time it was my turn to read, I not only looked a mess, but sounded one too!

Mr. Lace reading his vows to me.

I think he said he knows I love him because I share my bacon and churros with him.

I’m a crier. What can I say?

So, as a bride who has been through the vow writing process, here are my tips.

1. Agree on a due date so you don’t procrastinate. Make sure your due date is not the day before the wedding! Try to finish them a couple weeks before. If Mr. Lace and I had written these earlier, our week before the wedding would have been stress and fight free!
2. Agree on a general length. That was hard for us to quantify. Should we write 150 words? 200? What if one person is more wordy. It’ll take them more words to get their point across. If that words for you, that’s great! It didn’t for us. Instead, we gave each other a time limit. We said our vows would be between 2- 3 minutes long.
3. If you decide not to share your vows in advance, like Mr. Lace and I did, find a trustworthy, well-educated friend or family member that can read over both of your vows for tone and length. He/she can give suggestions or hints to help.
4. When you print it out, make sure you make the print large enough to read so that you don’t have to squint at your paper or keep your eyes glued on your paper and ignore your spouse-to-be.

Even with all the stress, personal vows were totally worth it for us. We were able to express our commitment to one another during this very important ceremony in our own words. Apparently, we got a few guests to cry. We heard that Seattle cousin Lace was bawling through the vows. People around him thought he was being sarcastic until they looked at him and saw that he really was bawling!

Are you planning on writing your own vows? Has it been an easy or difficult process for you and your FI?