Thoughts on Private Wedding Vows?

I think it is a cute idea but how would you do it without seeing each other? (Never seen the show). My fh doesnt want to see me til the ceremony so it wouldnt work for us.

We aren't married (pun definitely intended) to the idea of not seeing each other prior to the ceremony, and had been considering doing a first look, so it would be a like a first look, I guess, but with some sweet, little vows mixed in.

I think you can do it by writing a letter, if you're adamant about not seeing one another. But I think it depends on how you and FH want your vows to go. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, maybe even during a first look, if that's what you're going for. The intimacy behind it would be sweet, but then again I invited people to my wedding to see me give my vows & commit to FH. So I personally wouldn't do it privately, but whatever works for you.

This is an amazing idea.

I was ready to agree with you and suggest that you do this during a first look. However, your thought that it would "move the ceremony along quicker" makes no sense. Your officiant must go through certain of the vows with you for your marriage to be legal. If you do not want this to be public, you need to elope and have a celebration of marriage party. Once you invite people to the wedding, you cannot go off into another room for part of the service.

I suggest you keep your vows in the ceremony to the traditional ones and if you have any personal ones to do that beforehand. It will not save you any time, but I am sure it will be special.

To be completely, brutally honest I think it's dumb. The whole point of having guests at your wedding is for them to witness you make your vows and bind yourselves together. Otherwise it is just a big party.

@Future Mrs Mash... I had definitely thought about the letter thing prior to this idea coming to mind, so we will probably do that if we decide not to speak the private vows. We would still have the normal ceremony, with all of the legal vows, so people would see us committing to one another, they just wouldn't hear the personalized things that we would like to say to one another. It would basically be a normal ceremony without any customizations.

@StPaulGal... I love your brutal honesty (I have seen it in other posts ), so I definitely appreciate it, and the dumbness of it has crossed my mind, which is why I am looking to see what other people think!

I don't think it's very fair to call someone else's idea dumb, just because you don't agree with it. But that's just me...

@veeismeee, I think this is a very personal decision, and I hope that you're referring to your private vows as something on top of the legal ones. While it's necessary for everyone to witness your marriage, hence the reason for inviting them, they do not have to witness any part of it that you wish to be private. Do your thing, lady. However you wanna do this is totally okay!

I will edit my original post so people realize that we're still saying our legal vows in the ceremony... just the personalized vows (things like I will always laugh at your dumb jokes, and love your amazing daughter always and forever, etc) in the private moment.

I've done this for couples, but if you're going to invite other guests, I think they should be able to witness your vows.

You could do your wedding privately and just have your friends at the party; I think it's really up to you.

We're actually doing this, I did not know they did this on some show, but FH is already super nervous about being up in front of 150 people--a lot of which he does not know that well because they are my extended family that live out of province/out of the country and he's only met them a couple times. We are of course saying the legal vows in front of everyone, but right before we do that, our officiant will say to those attending that "A & S have said their own personal vows privately to each other before the ceremony" or something along those lines.

FH and I feel that we can be completely honest with each other with these personal vows and if we decide to include little quirks or inside jokes, WE will understand them and it won't matter that the rest of the room does not--because there is no "rest of the room".

We will be having our first look, then saying our vows to each other and other than the photographer and videographer, no one else will be present. So it will be completely private other than the incredible people we have hired to capture our day.

FH is extremely shy so he does not want to say personal vows in front of our family and friends. I compromised with saying traditional vows during the ceremony but reading his written/personal ones before our first look.

I love this idea!! We thought about doing this through letters to each other on the wedding day, but then we both let stress catch up with us and kind of dropped the ball on our letters to each other!

We had a Catholic wedding so we couldn't personalize our vows. We did the standard ones during our wedding and we exchanged personalized vows on our honeymoon.

Thank you everyone for sharing all of your diverse thoughts, considerations, and similar potential plans! I really just started thinking about this more, because for some reason this type of thing came up over the weekend while talking with FH, and I mentioned what happened on the show I watch, and FH was like: I actually like that idea, so I started thinking about it more, and wanted to gather some more opinions. At the very least, I think we will probably try to go the letter route, and emphasis on try, because I can see us spacing it, such as in the case of @WWLynnie!

My FH and I are secretly getting married the weekend before our ceremony so that we can have an intimate moment with just the two of us. We will say our vows at the ceremony for everyone to hear but we think it will be special for us to do it alone first

@courtnie... there's a difference between what you're doing, and what is being discussed on this thread: what you're doing is lying to your guests, because they're essentially attending a vow renewal at that point. I am not considering legally getting married before my ceremony, I am considering sharing some private sentiments with my FH before our legal vows are performed in front of our guests.

So FYI-- secretly getting married before your planned ceremony is looked down upon here at WW, and really probably throughout the world.

Stop with the lying Vee.... it's not looked down on here, and certainly not "throughout the world" where in most places you have a civil ceremony that is separate from your family celebration.

It's looked down on by five people here who consider it lying. No one else does.

Well the "probably" was thrown in that sentence to make it less definitive!