Writing Your Own Vows - Part 2: Non-Traditional Vows

Here are some ideas to get you started. I pulled these from The Everything Wedding Vows Book , by Janet Anastasio and Michelle Bevilacqua, a book that I have found to be exceedingly helpful in the vow-writing process.

"Today, (name), I join my life to yours, not merely as your (wife/husband), but as your friend, your lover, and your confidant. Let me be the shoulder you lean on, the rock on which you rest, the companion of your life. With you I will walk my path from this day forward."

"(Name), with free and unconstrained soul, I give you all I am and all I am to become. Take this ring and with it my promise of faith, patience, and love, for the rest of my life."

Two flames, one light. (Name), I offer you this ring as a sign of life, and myself as your (husband/wife). Let us walk together always, and let us always walk toward the light."

"A ceremony is for a day; a marriage is for a lifetime. Today, i join my life with yours for as long as I shall live on this earth, forsaking all others. (Name), I freely offer myself to you as your (husband/wife)."

"To marry the person you have set your heart upon is a joy unparalleled in human life. (Name), take this ring as a sign of my faith and my commitment to our love, and share this joy with me today."

"Where there has been cold, you have brought warmth; where my life was dark, you have brought light. (Name), I pledge before this assembled company to be your (husband/wife) from this day forward. Let us make of our two lives, one life, and let us always honor and respect each other."

"Love has given us wings, and our journey begins today. (Name), where ever the wind may carry me, I will stay by your side as your (husband/wife). Take this ring as a sign of my love."

"Love is to be cherished when we find it in life, and I cherish it in you. (Name), let us build a life together. I give myself to you as your (husband/wife), and I pledge here to cherish for all of my days the love we celebrate today."

Writing Your Own Vows: Part 1; Thoughts On Love

I've recently been thinking about Bill and I writing our own vows. I think it makes the ceremony that much more special and personalizes it for us. So I have been reading The Everything Wedding Vows Book by Janet Anastasio and Michelle Bevilacqua which has been extremely helpful in the vow-writing process. I've decided to include some highlights from the book in a three part blog, the first part focusing on thoughts on love: good quotes from smart people on love and marriage. Feel free to use these quotes in your own vows, ceremony, on programs, or however you wish! I have *ed my faves!

"It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved."
-Euripides

"Those who love deeply never grow old. They may die of old age, but they die young."
-Benjamin Franklin

"In loving, you lean on someone to hold them up."
-Rod McKuen

"True love doesn't have a happy ending, true love doesn't have an ending."
-Unknown

"To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven."
-Karen Sunde

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."
-Leo Tolstoy

*"Where there is love there is life."
-Mahatma Ghandi

"Love is being stupid together."
-Paul Valery

"What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven."
-Victor Hugo

*"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities."
-Janos Arany

"We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence and its only end."
-Benjamin Disraeli

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
-Antoine de Saint Exupery

"Love...has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another."
-Plato

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love."
-Sophocles

"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
-Maya Angelou

"True love doesn't consist of holding hands, it consists of holding hearts."
-O.A. Battista

"Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye."
-H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Love...includes fellowship in suffering, in joy, and in effort."
-Albert Schweitzer

"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed."
-J. Krishnamurti

"Do all things with love."
-Og Mandino

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
-James Baldwin

"True love is the joy of life."
-John Clarke

"The love we give away is the only love we keep."
-Elbert Hubbard

"When people care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul."
-Langston Hughes

*"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart."
-Helen Keller

*"By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love he may rule the world forever."
-Lao Tzu

"Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter."
-T.S. Eliot

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be.That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, If you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
-Erica Jong