How Long Should Vows Be?

I would check with your officiant. They will help you write and edit your vows.

I would imagine vows to be at least 30 seconds to a minute long. If there is anything more you want to say you could write him a letter the morning of or say it after the ceremony in a moment of down time with just the two of you.

We're having a 20-30 minute ceremony. My main concern is the length of mine compared to his... Mine only take a minute or so to read, but if his are only a few sentences, I'm concerned I'll sound like I'm rambling.

Perhaps I could pick some select points and put the other stuff in a separate note to him...

I'm sure I'm going to have the same exact problem. I actually told him yesterday that he can't just write 1 line lol.

Our officiant is going to get both our vows from us the week before and offer selections to even them out in case there’s a similar situation. I would see if your officiant could do that for you. I think a page sounds like a bit much.

Mention that yours are about a page long and talk about how excited you are and hopefully hell realize he needs to write more.

Shoot they can be as long as you want them to be. Who cares what they think? The people at your wedding eat that stuff up! My FH vows are gonna be so long and I wouldn't have it any other way. Remember it's your day and the only day you will have vows.

It depends on the couple. I know my dad and his second wife (now divorced thankfully) had an hour long ceremony. When my cousin who is about 18 years older than me married his second wife the ceremony was less than 10 minutes. I don't know how long his first wedding was as I was an infant so didn't matter to me one way or the other.

Mine started looooong (a couple pages) and his were short (a paragraph). I edited mine back and he added to his to help close the gap, but mine were still a bit longer. I put everything else in a letter to him. We each spoke for 3-4 minutes-ish, but peppered it with both sweet and funny sentiments to keep the guests from zoning out.

Have a talk about length (how many lines), style (humorous/serious), and look up vow structure on MarthaStewartWeddings.com, and here on WW as there are prompt questions to help the writing process.
My H and I ended up working on our vows together (I still got emotional at the ceremony 😊)
The vow structure I followed was:
-Beginning: 3 lines of thoughts/feeling on the start of relationship/knew when I loved him
-Middle: 7 lines of vows/promises; I alternated between using vow or promise depending on what it was. A couple of my lines had 2 promises.
-End: 1 or 2 lines about what hopes/inspirations for the future.

the tip I noted the most was to remember to put "I love you" in the vows as that is the most forgotten part, and the whole reason for the day.

I figure I’m going to have the same thing. My guy is a man of few words, meanwhile I wrote a 16 stanza spoken words please that comes in at 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Oh well, ain’t no “should be” at my wedding; we’re doing what we want. 😊

View Quoted Comment Totally agree!

That should have said “spoken word piece” not “please”.

View Quoted Comment I was wondering about my vows as well. I wanted to sing but that's impossible I hear. I have so much to say that I want him to know but don't want to be dragging on and putting people to sleep. What should I say that's important and sweet but not too long? Please help my ceremony will be small but I still want it special on November 10th of this year.

I don't have a page, didn't even write my vows cause I know what I'm going to and want to say. I just don't want my vows to be too much.