Someone close to me asked me recently: if I were to marry again, what sort of wedding vows could I make, with integrity?
It’s a good question, a pointed question, and I’ve given it considerable thought. Particularly because my views on marriage itself are not exactly what they once were (more on that later, perhaps). And so I thought I’d share an initial try.
Not only are these vows much more descriptively realistic, given divorce rates (even among conservative Christians, I might add), but I think they’re much more prescriptively healthy as well. And dammit, even far more romantic than traditional vows. But despite all that, I can count on precisely zero fingers the number of times I’ve heard vows in the general spirit of these, and I’ve photographed hundreds of weddings. Perhaps there just aren’t very many helpful templates out there. In any case, without further ado:
Beloved, we stand here today, madly in love with each other, madly committed to one another. And I hope in the deepest part of my being that that will always be so, till the end of our days.
But I’m under no illusion that, in any sense, we own each other. I am not the owner of, but rather I’m a tenant of your heart, your love. You’ve offered me perhaps the most impossibly beautiful gift that can be offered. And it is not now–and it never will be–my place to take that gift for granted, to take it as a given.
And I know that despite our best wishes and intentions today, we might someday have grown apart from one another. I can’t promise that we will forever be able to meet each other’s needs as fully as we can today, and we both deserve. But what I can promise, despite the sudden or simmering heartbreak, is that I’ll try my very best then to let you go with grace. To befriend you always, even as you continue to pursue the love and the wholeness that you deserve, elsewhere.
But you know what? With equal parts luck and just plain hard work, I hope with all my heart that we can grow old together, and still be so desperately in love with one other. Greyed and wrinkled and so goddamn happy in each other’s arms. I can’t promise the luck. I can promise that I’ll work hard for you, and I know that you will too.
I’m wildly in love with you. And I can barely begin to express my gratitude to you, for loving me. For inviting me into your heart.
