Wedding Vows

For most traditions, there really isn’t much of a standard. I checked with a Baptist pastor, and he says that he provides couples with some examples and lets them pick.

I looked around quite a bit, and I found some resources that list common vows for different religious traditions, but nothing was presented as a standard or requirement… except for the Church of England.

On their website, they have “legally approved” …scripts (?) for the ceremony. As part of these scripts, the wedding vows are explicitly defined:

I, ____, take you, ____,
to be my wife,
to have and to hold
from this day forward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part;
according to God’s holy law.
In the presence of God I make this vow.

These are from something called “ The Marriage Service from Common Worship,” published in 2000.

There’s also a version from 1662, in which the vows go like this (the pastor is reading these, not the groom):

___ wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?

To which the groom will (hopefully) answer, “I will.”

Why I Looked It Up

In a NY Times connections puzzle, the items were:

• Cherish
• Have
• Hold
• Love

And the category was “Church of England Wedding Vow Verbs.”