Wedding Ceremony Planning: Traditional or Do-it-yourself?

Are you torn between whether you will recite the traditional marriage vows or write your own marriage vows? Take heart. This is one area where you can have it both ways. Well, maybe anyway. There’s a huge difference in reciting the “repeat after me” vows the minister says first and you repeat and stepping out there and reciting vows all on your own from memory.

As far as the wedding ceremony planning, this is one area where, if at all possible, the bride and groom both need to be happy with the end result. Even though the ceremony itself only lasts for a few moments, most of us sweat bullets just saying, “I do.” Moral of the story? If either party is uncomfortable reciting vows from memory, don’t try to force the issue.

If however, both of you do feel comfortable reciting your own vows, get busy writing! You can still have the traditional vows if you wish or you can just use your own. A word of caution: Once the other party has written his or her vows and if they offer to share them with you before the ceremony, don’t criticize! Even if it’s just a simple was instead of were or is instead of are violation. You don’t want your partner to be so nervous they can’t go through with the recitation.

You can, of course, get together and collaborate on the written vows and the wedding ceremony planning in general. That’s up to you. You can make it something like the traditional vows where you each essentially say the same thing to one another or you can work on this individually. One of you may even want to wait until the ceremony itself to reveal the vows you write. That’s fine too. This is the perfect opportunity to respect each other’s individuality.

Some men don’t want any part of the wedding ceremony planning. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, it just means he trusts the bride to pull everything off without him. Women have been doing that for centuries so don’t be offended by that.

Above all, don’t let the wedding ceremony planning or any part of the wedding planning stress you past the point of being able to enjoy one of the most important days of your life. Stick to what’s really important and be willing to compromise. You won’t regret it.

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