About Written Vows
Most people write wedding vows exactly once, under a deadline, having never written anything like them before. This site is for that person.
What this site is
A collection of complete, usable wording — not a listicle of tips. Every page here is built to be lifted from: whole wedding vows you can read out as written, full ceremony scripts with the officiant’s lines included, and speeches written end to end rather than sketched as an outline.
There are no sign-ups, no paywalls and no download gates. Take the wording, change the names, make it yours.
Who writes and checks it
Written Vows is written and edited by Taro Schenker, a writer and web publisher who researches, verifies and maintains every page on this site. It is published by Known by One, LLC, 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, Delaware 19713, United States.
Why the traditional texts here are trustworthy
Liturgical wording gets copied from blog to blog until it drifts, and a great deal of what circulates online as “the traditional wedding vows” is subtly wrong — a clause dropped, a rite misattributed, a line remembered rather than read.
So nothing here is quoted from memory. Every verbatim rite text, statute and scripture passage on this site was checked against a named published source before it went up: the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Common Worship, the 1979 Episcopal prayer book, the Order of Celebrating Matrimony, the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Marriage Act 1949, and so on. That record is kept as we go, and it has already caught a real error on a page that had already been published — a Lutheran vow attributed to the wrong book and quoted with the wrong final clause. It was corrected the same day.
Where a tradition has no vows at all — an Orthodox or a traditional Jewish ceremony — the site says so plainly instead of inventing a text to fill the gap. The full standards are on the editorial policy page.
What this site is not
It is not legal, religious or officiating advice. Marriage law differs by country and by state, and individual churches, synagogues and register offices set their own requirements about what may and may not be altered. Whatever you plan to say, confirm it with your officiant or registrar before the day.
Spotted a mistake in a quoted text, an attribution or a legal detail? Please tell us — corrections are made quickly and gratefully.