Wedding vows for her: 23 examples to say to your bride

I take you to be my wife, with my eyes open. I know what I am promising. I am promising the hard weeks as well as the easy ones, the version of you that is tired and short-tempered, the years neither of us can see from here.

I promise to be steady through all of it. To tell you the truth kindly, to apologise properly, and to keep turning towards you instead of away. You have me. You have had me for a while, but today I am saying it in front of everyone.

I will love you, I will be honest with you, and I will be here. When you are ill I will look after you. When you are wrong I will tell you gently. When you are right I will admit it eventually. Everything I have is yours, and so am I.

Before you, I thought love was something you fell into. You taught me it is something you do — deliberately, repeatedly, most often on days when nobody is watching and nothing feels romantic at all.

So I am not going to promise you fireworks. I am going to promise you the work: attention when you are talking, patience when you are struggling, and a person who keeps showing up. I take you as my wife, and I will be doing this on purpose for the rest of my life.

I, [name], take you, [name], to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

And one promise the old words leave out: I will keep being interested in you. Not just in love with you — interested. For all of it.

Today I take you as my wife. I promise to love you in prosperity and in hardship, in health and in sickness, when we agree and when we very much do not.

I promise to keep no secrets from you, to guard yours, and to speak well of you always. From this day forward, for as long as we both shall live.

In front of the people who made us both, I give myself to you. I will be faithful to you in body and in mind. I will treat you as an equal in every decision we make. I will do the unglamorous half of this, willingly, for decades.

This is my vow, made freely, and I intend to keep it.

I promise to listen properly. I promise to say the difficult thing early instead of letting it rot. I promise to make you laugh at least once a day. I promise to be kind when you are not at your best. I promise to notice. I promise to stay.

Most of a marriage is admin. Bins, bills, whose turn it is, what to have for dinner again. I promise to be good company for that part — cheerful about my share of it, and grateful for yours. The big days will look after themselves. I am here for the small ones.

I will be honest with you. I will be gentle with you. I will not leave. I have nothing more complicated than that to offer you, and nothing more true.

I am not going to try to say all of it. Here is the important part: you are the best decision I have ever made, I plan to spend my life acting like I know it, and I take you as my wife today without a single reservation.

It was [place], and you were [small, specific thing she was doing], and I went home and told [friend] that I had met someone I was going to be careful about. I was not careful for very long.

I promise to keep paying that kind of attention. To notice what you are like this year, not just what you were like when we met. To be the person who actually sees you.

You could have loved anyone. You had every option, and you looked at me — with all of it, the moods and the mess and the terrible taste in [thing] — and you chose me anyway.

I have never got over it and I do not intend to. I promise to be worth the choice. I promise to make our home a place you are glad to come back to. I take you as my wife, and I will be thanking my luck for it for fifty years.

I do not need our life to be remarkable. I need it to be ours. Slow Sundays. Your hand found in a crowd. Someone genuinely pleased when the door opens.

I promise to love you steadily rather than loudly, which I have come to think is the harder and better thing. I take you, today and every day after it.

We did not arrive here by an easy road. [Number] years, and at least two of them I would not repeat for anything — and you were there for all of it, unglamorously, making toast at midnight and refusing to panic.

So today is not the start of anything. It is a declaration about something that already exists. I choose this. I choose you, out loud, in front of everyone, and I will keep choosing you long after today is a photograph.

I vow to pretend I have not seen the ending. I vow to carry the bags, all of them, without being asked and without mentioning it more than twice. I vow to keep saying the restaurant was your idea.

And underneath the nonsense: I vow to be loyal to you, honest with you and completely on your side, for as long as I am lucky enough to have you.

I was told to keep this under a minute, so: you are clever, you are kind, and you have tolerated me for [length of time] with remarkable grace. I promise to make the next fifty years worth it. That is the whole vow. You may all stop worrying.

I promise to warm my feet somewhere other than on you. I promise to reply to your messages before you can send the second one. I promise to remember the names of your colleagues, at least the ones we dislike.

I also promise patience, honesty and my whole heart for as long as I have one — but mostly the feet.

Before God and everyone gathered here, I take you to be my wife. I promise to love you faithfully, to forgive you quickly, and to pray for you when you cannot pray for yourself. With God’s help I will keep this promise as long as I live.

I make this covenant with you today, before God, because I know I cannot keep it on my own strength. I will love you as I have been loved. I will serve you without keeping count. I will lead by going first when something is hard, and I will follow you gladly when you see it more clearly than I do.

I thank God for you, and I intend to spend my life proving I meant it. I will be patient. I will be kind. I will keep no record of wrongs. And on the days I manage none of the three, I will come back, say so, and try again.

I take you as my wife, my best friend and my favourite person in any room, and I promise to be honest, kind and present for every day I am given.

I promise to love you, to tell you the truth, and to stay when it would be easier not to. Today, tomorrow, and for as long as I have.

You are home. I take you as my wife, and I am not going anywhere.