Wedding Vows Create Good Marriages

I’m taking a line from Wilfred Peterson’s poem, The Art of Marriage: A good marriage has to be created.

This states my basic philosophy of why a couple must write their own personal wedding vows: You write your own wedding vows to create a vision or a dream for your life together. And for the ‘biggest bang for your buck’ write them in shared conversation!

When a couple writes their own wedding vows together it is a fantastic opportunity to use this highly charged time to begin to craft–consciously and specifically–a good marriage much as one would create a work of art, which is what you want your marriage to be–a work of art!

Only this one you don’t hang on the wall, you’re living it.

Maybe that’s not true. Maybe you do hang a good marriage on the wall. Photographs can tell the true story! They are memories in living color.

By sitting down together and talking about important aspects of your marriage you are directing your thought for the specific purpose of creating a dream, a vision, a beautiful marriage with substance. This has more sticking power than casual conversation.

When you sit down together to engage in crafting a dream for your life together that you will put into the form of wedding vows, some of that dialog can be as specific as the question, “What is your and my idea of what the term, ‘good marriage’ means?

It’s OK to look at what is ‘doesn’t’ mean but don’t spend too much time on this.Use it as a starting point only.

Almost all of our opinion and experience of what a marriage is has been developed by being exposed to parents, grandparents, friends, brothers and sisters, etc. There can be some emotional experiences that you do not want to get too deeply into.

Look at what your experience and exposure has told you didn’t work then say to yourselves, “Ok, I, we, don’t want to do that. Then what do we need to do, to know, to be aware of that is the opposite of what didn’t work?

You’ve most likely also seen couples who had very good marriages. Verbally visit those and try to put into words what the elements were that made up those marriages.

It’s also well worth your time to ask those people how they created such wonderful marriages. If you don’t have time before you write your vows, then do it after the wedding.

In fact, it’s a good habit to keep watching, listening, and inquiring into the habits that comprise strong marriages and apply those examples into your lives.

Define what you believe a good marriage to be, write it down in your vows and pledge to keep working at it until you are living that dream!

You can see more blogs and access my Ebook on The Secret Life of Wedding Vows-How to Write Vows That Create Powerful Marriages at www.weddingvowsandceremonies.com

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda