Confused about personal “vows”

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We read each others for the videos. Yes, you can always read them again, and we obviously both kept our letters. However, there is something so special about reading it for the first time on your wedding day. We both teared up and it just made it that much sweeter.

I think this is an interesting downstream effect of society becoming more secular. Traditionally, different cultures and religious communities have a well-defined concept of what marriage is, and when you get married, you enter into that institution as it is defined by your community - the central piece of which is vowing that you will keep all of the promises that marriage entails. When people are nonreligious, marriage becomes whatever they want it to be - which is sweet, in a way, but also leads to a lack of common understanding of what marriage is and what it means to be married. I think this is part of why we see love-letter vows, because people tend to write what comes from their heart rather than a declaration of promises they plan to keep.

I have definitely noticed this. The content of most people's personal "vows" would really be more suited to a private exchange of letters than a wedding ceremony. But, this is the current trend and it probably won't change any time soon. I would certainly never tell any couple that I was thinking this during their "vows", but I must be honest and admit here that I do think it.

I've never noticed this and absolutely don't care what people say or what they call it. I also don't remember any couples vows. I think they should say whatever it is they want though it's their day. And call it whatever they want.

Ava, I completely understood your sentiment before reading through all the responses. I have seen what you are describing both on the forum and in person and it makes me cringe though I would never say anything to the couple. There is a reason that the traditional vows and modern variations have stood the test of time: because they are part of legal verbiage required for a wedding to be valid and binding. A love letter is great to put inside a card for the video but it is not the required promises you will be exchanging. Why even hire an officiant with license for legalities if “you don’t care” or “that’s not the reason why you are getting married”? There are a million non traditional vows online to pick from that are actual vows and not a love letter.

And no you cannot call something by a name that it doesn’t have. Your analogies are spot on.

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I feel like everyone thinks taking the traditional vows is “boring” or “unoriginal” or “not sentimental”. But aren’t vows the bedrock of the entire ceremony?! I’m so happy to hear you got emotional taking actual VOWS, not just reading a love letter to your SO. IMO, promising to uphold your commitments in front of your friends and family is one of the most sacred and enduring parts of a wedding ceremony. We have also chosen to do the traditional vows (with a couple personalized ones thrown in as well). It’s funny, people keep saying traditional vows are “unoriginal”… but it seems to me that doing them has actually become quite unique, because everyone else is writing love letters in lieu of vows lol

View Quoted Comment It’s nice to see some people still understand what writing personal vows means- that they are personalized, but still contain actual vows!

View Quoted Comment Thank you for understanding and making me feel normal! 😆 Although I would never express to a couple that their “vows” really weren’t… I still silently think it every time LOL It’s just nice to know I’m not the only one that has noticed this trend

View Quoted Comment I’m pretty sure a lot of it stems from my neuroses about the English language being used properly. I’m all for a couples expressing their love to one another during their wedding ceremony- i’ve just noticed time and time again that couples will claim they are going to read vows…. then don’t. LOL Like, if they just didn’t want to take vows at all, and only wanted to read eachother love letters, express heartfelt sentiments, etc. I’m here for it! I just can’t help but notice every time I hear a couple say they are going to exchange vows, then don’t include any sort of vows in their speech 😆 When couples say they are about to take vows, they are saying that they are about to give a list of promises/commitments they are making to one another. If they do not include this list of promises, then they did not in fact write or take vows.. they simply said pretty words to one another. It just comes off as though they were confused, uneducated or unknowledgeable on what a vow is.

View Quoted Comment THANK YOU!!! I don’t understand how people don’t grasp the concept that words have definitive meanings, and you can’t just go around calling things whatever you want to “just cause”. Could you imagine how confusing the world would be?? LOL
Thank you for understanding that this post was about an observation of a misused (possibly misunderstood or lack of knowledge about?) a portion of a wedding ceremony, and not an attack on couples sharing heartfelt sentiments.

View Quoted Comment No I completely disagree with you. Marriage doesn't fit into a box that you think just because it's what your religion or culture says. I'm pretty sure all of us non religious people know EXACTLY what marriage is.

Lol, I do know exactly what you mean, although it doesn't bother me!

My vows (should I put that in speech marks? haha!) start off with HOW I love my partner (that some things are basically inexplicable and just a part of you, and he is now one of those things to me), go into what I know I am accepting in choosing to marry him (funny things like him always holding the remote or whatever) and then what I promise in return.

It wasn't until I actually sat down and began to write them that I realised how careful I needed to be - I didn't want to promise anything I truly didn't think I'd be capable of owning in the next 50 or however many years of life we have left together. Because vows are promises. And what I've written are things above and beyond what we are legally required to have.

View Quoted Comment But that's my point, your conceptualization of what marriage is might (probably) be very different from mine, or Ava's, or anyone else's, precisely because there is no longer a common understanding based on something outside of ourselves.

View Quoted Comment I love this! Not only are you writing vows, but you are really putting thought into them. We are doing the same. We know that these vows will be the promises which our marriage is built upon, so we are taking them very seriously. We plan to do (most of) the traditional vows, plus extras that we feel are important to us and reflective of our relationship.

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So sweet! And I'm thankful it's not just me who is like, 'oh wow. These are actually a big deal and I need to be able to commit to them if I've said them in front of 120-odd people!'

View Quoted Comment Exactly! Instead of just your husband, there are now 120 people keeping you accountable! 😱😆 j/k
Seriously though.. that’s very admirable you are creating vows that are both personal and attainable 💕

View Quoted Comment 👏👏👏👏👏👏This right here. Just because someone isn't religious doesn't mean they don't know what marriage is. Just as many religious people get divorced as non religious.

View Quoted Comment You missed the entire point of tiger bride‘s post. She is not saying non-religious individuals do not understand what marriage is 🤦🏼‍♀️ Just like my original post was completely misconstrued as well. No one is judging whether or not people take vows during their weddings. Also, no one is debating whether religion has anything to do with the sanctity of a marriage. The entire post was strictly about this new trend where people do not understanding what it means to write vows vs speeches/love letters/ sentiments. That is all. It was just an observation of how the definition of vows is somehow being lost 🤷🏼‍♀️ Y’all are making this into something nefarious, when it really isn’t that deep LOL

View Quoted Comment She literally said
"When people are nonreligious, marriage becomes whatever they want it to be - which is sweet, in a way, but also leads to a lack of common understanding of what marriage is and what it means to be married"

View Quoted Comment Exactly. She is saying that what marriage means to one person is not necessarily the same to another. That there is no universal right or wrong. (In other words, how marriage is defined in a Muslim culture differs from that of a Christian culture, which differs from that of an atheist culture, etc. etc. and none of them are “wrong”… they are just different. Hence, there is no “common understanding of what marriage is and what it means to be married” because there is not one definition that spans across all religions and cultures.