Wedding vows

You don't have to write your own vows if you don't want to.

In my experience, vows are said before the exchanging of rings. You can definitely do something standard- our officiant gave us a bunch of different options that we can just repeat from him. We are considering doing personal vows during our first look so we don't have to say super mushy stuff in front of everyone lol.

Would it be highly unusual if we did it afterwards? That's that my father suggested.

It is normally done before but you can do it after if you want to. Is there any reason why he suggested after?

You don't have to do personalized vows by any means. Or you can do personalized ones, but still give them to the officiant so you can repeat after them.

We're reciting our vows as we place the rings on each other's finger.

Your officiant and wedding coordinator should help you plan your timeline out. You don't have to write your own vows.

We don't have a planner. The man who is marrying us is my paternal grandfather. It's simple but I wanted to include as many family members as possible.

In my ceremonies, I usually say "The wedding ring seals your vows of marriage..." So, it only makes sense that the ring exchange is after the vow exchange. For the ring exchange, they repeat after me (like they did for the vow exchange -- unless they read their own vows).

You can exchange vows as you exchange rings. You don't even have to exchange rings.

You dont have to write your vows if you dont want to, we did it. The pastor was the one who guided us during I ceremony and let us know how it works ahead of time as well