Weddingbee Blog

Now that we’re into serious countdown time, procrastinating on things like, oh, the ceremony has got to stop!

We’ve known for a while now that we would use the “Art of a Good Marriage” by Wilfred Arlan Peterson as a ceremony reading, just like Mrs. Gloss and Miss Elephant, but what we couldn’t figure out were our vows. See, “I, Hippo, take you King Hippo, to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part,” is simple and beautiful. But those super traditional vows don’t really fit with the wedding we’ve created. We are getting married in a art gallery, and serving wine before the ceremony. Clearly, this is not going to be an uber-traditional affair. To me, using super traditional vows in this very non-traditional wedding setting, just doesn’t fit…

So we were starting from scratch.

When we met with our officiant back in October, we mentioned that we wanted to find less traditional vows, and possibly write our own.

He suggested we consider our vows in two ways—what we wanted to say to each other and what we wanted others who were witnessing our wedding ceremony to take away from it…basically, what did we want other people to hear us commit to each other?

With that in mind, I began an exhaustive internet search. I figured if we were going to write our own vows, we would certainly need some inspiration and if we found something that we just loved, even better. I stumbled across a ton of non-traditional vows that were nice, but nothing really stood out until I came across the poem I Promise by Dorothy R. Colgan. As soon as I read it, the search came to a screeching halt. I’m 100% in love, and King Hippo is a huge fan as well. So, it is decided! I know, I know, enough talking….more vow-ing. Here you go, hive! The Hippo vows….

I Promise by Dorothy R. Colgan

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 bad,

with all I have to give and all I feel inside in the only way I know how.

Completely and forever.

*Sigh* I just love them. And I get a little choked up when I think about saying these words to King Hippo on our wedding day. So. Excited.

What non-traditional vows have you found that you love?