Anyone writing your own vows or letters to each other?

We did! It was wonderful. Put "paging Celia" in your title--she has a great formula for writing your own vows, which we found super helpful. I believe it's this: Three things you love about the other person, and three things you'll do to make the marriage work.

We also got some pretty vow books off of Amazon, and we're storing them in a keepsake box from our wedding day, along with my bouquet, our handfasting cord, and some other tokens.

We wrote our own vows and we wrote letters to each other. Both of which I will cherish for as long as I can. I would recommend doing them if you're considering it.

We sent in our vows separately to our officiant to review - thankfully she said they were perfect, and nothing needed to be changed. She printed them on beautiful parchment paper and handed them to us when it was time to read them.

We wrote our own vows !

We're writing our own vows FH said that it was tacky to have generic vows that everyone says but I wanted to do my own so that I can tell him MY vow to him in MY own words

Vows.

Keep them short, sweet and personal. By the time you get to the vows, your guests know the end is near. They are at the limit of their attention span, no matter how fabulous it's been.

Do not retell your life story; if you have a personal story in your ceremony, we have already told that.

Don't write things you're not prepared to say out loud in front of 100 ish people.

Make them funny, but avoid inside jokes that no one gets.

Keep in mind that vows are promises.

Four lines of what you love about him/her

Four lines of what you promise to do to keep this marriage strong.

Do not memorize them. Write them down so you can read them. Ask your officiant to print them out on something pretty for you.

If you are really nervous, don't use a mic; say them to each other; that's what they're for.

In no world should your vows be longer than 90 seconds; time them. It will feel like an eternity when you're in the midst of it.

@Celia That is a lot of great advice, thank you so much! I was wondering how to even start thinking of what to say in vows and that 8-line bit is super helpful.

We wrote our own vows but we didn't read them at the ceremony. We had our officiant use them in the "repeat after me" portion. That way we didn't have to memorize them but we were both still surprised because we didn't know what each other had written.

Nope I'm gonna be ugly crying if I do..

We are writing our own. Then we will repeat after the officiant when it comes time to exchange rings. After we say the vows.

We are writing our own but we need to finalize format. We are also doing traditional.

We're writing our own vows. It's just more personal to us..I'm so excited for that part. And I will be writing my FH a letter on our wedding day to have given to him

I am currently trying to write my own vows for my wedding Saturday. Any chance you would be willing to share what your wrote in your vows so I can try to do something similar? I am really struggling!