Watching A Wedding Story the other day, I noticed that the couple’s vows sounded a little “off” from what I’m used to.
Instead of the “till death do us part” line, they substituted something along the lines of “love, honor, and cherish you for the rest of our lives together”
Is this because it’s pretty much understood now that there’s a 50-50 chance of divorce, so they changed the vows to focus on the part of the journey that they make together? Or maybe they just wanted to get rid of that nasty “death” thing.
Any recently-married Dopers, or those engaged to be married - what did your vows sound like, or what are you planning to use, and why? I’m curious to see if there’s a trend away from the “till death do us part” thing, just like most people dropped the “obey” from the vows a while ago.
If you’ve ever watched Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David does a hilarious take on a similar theme.
I’ve never been married, but the weddings I’ve been to in the past few years still had the “death do us part” line in them.
I had “'Til death do us part” - at a courthouse, lesbian judge, just last year. So I’d say we had a pretty modern, non-traditional, non-denominational little ceremony, and the phrase was still used. We just spoke our vows after the judge.
I’m engaged, and we’ll be saying “till death to us part” or “as long as we both shall live” or whatever phrase means “until we’re dead” that sounds nice to us.
Like most modern couples, we won’t be saying “obey”, though I think that was antiquated when I was young, as I had heard “love, honor, and cherish” as wedding vows and didn’t know “obey” had ever been a part of them until I was older (probably early teens?), so it was never a consideration.
Since both my wife and I are atheists, we did not have a church wedding, opting for a JotP who came to our wedding location. Therefore, it was not expected (nor did we desire) that we rely on the “standard” vows. We wrote up a short paean to each other and used that. (Which was kind of scary at the time, since we didn’t know what the other was going to say.) Here, I just dug them up, as they were spoken:
I wouldn’t have done it any other way, as it was us doing the talking, not simply ritual. We actually had to put into words what we mean to one another. (I was quite surprised that the priest that performed my brother’s wedding allowed NO leeway in any part of the ceremony. A dictate from god, I suppose. Or possibly the priest was a control freak. I had no idea that was standard operating procedure.)
We wrote our own ceremony and left out the “till death do we part” line. I’ve heard other ceremonies recently that said “as long as we both shall love” which I think is a cheater version.
"As long as we both shall love? Ugh, they’re not even pretending to be giving a go at the whole “forever” thing. Why not just say “as long as it’s convenient and we both feel like it”?
We had a handfasting ceremony, so our vows were the ones we found on a pagan website outlining a traditional handfasting. We took out the more overtly pagan bits, both because it doesn’t reflect our beliefs and because such would have massively offended the bulk of our families.
“…as long as we both shall live.” That’s the alternative I’ve heard, that’s what we used, and I still like it. As atheists, we wrote our own vows, but we pretty much took the best lines of traditional wedding vows, with one of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the middle.
We’re not doing “obey”, but “til death do us part” will definitely be in there.
It’s the whole point of a wedding…a lifelong commitment, sworn in front of witnesses.Just because that’s not the way things turn out for some people doesn’t change the fact that this is what you’re meant to be signing up to.
Personally, I’m not saying “obey” because I don’t want to make a promise I know I won’t keep… and of course, because I shouldn’t have to obey my partner in a relationship of equals!
When I got married, I wrote my own vows, and today I have absolutely no recollection of what they were. My now-ex-husband picked his out of a book the minister showed us. Neither mentioned anything of the sort, IIRC. And the marriage lasted all of 16 months, so take that for what it’s worth.
This time, I suppose we’ll have something like “as long as we both shall live,” because I find the specific mention of death a little creepy in a marriage ceremony.
We also had “obey” in there, except we had it so we’d both say it. Then, the ditzy celebrant (who was awesome, just a little flighty), skipped that whole part when I was saying my vows. So, my husband vowed to love, honor, and obey me…I just promised to stick around until I die.
IIRC, our marriage vows said “as long as we both shall live”. After that, it’s a blur of bright swirling water (we married on a river bank) and champagne.
We also had one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets read during the ceremony.
The rest of the vows and such were pretty standard.