1. Start with the promise, not the poetry.
A vow is a promise. Everything else in it is decoration. Before you write a single beautiful line, finish this sentence plainly: I promise to. Whatever comes after that is your vow. The rest is how you get there.
2. Write about one person, not about love.
Love in general is a subject nobody can say anything new about. Your partner is a subject only you know. Every line that could appear in someone else's vows should come out.
3. The specific beats the beautiful.
“You make me a better person” is true and it is empty. “You wait in the car until I get inside” is a whole marriage in nine words. Reach for the small, exact, slightly embarrassing detail every time.
4. Say what you will do, not how you feel.
Feelings are the easy half and they are the half that changes. Promises are the hard half. “I will listen when I would rather be right.” “I will keep choosing this on the days it is not fun.” That is what a vow is for.
5. Sixty to ninety seconds.
That is roughly 150 to 220 words. Anything longer stops being a vow and starts being a speech. If you cannot cut it, you have not decided what it is about yet.
6. Read it out loud, standing up, before the day.
Silently at a desk is not the test. Say it standing, at full volume, to a wall. You will hear which lines you cannot get through and which ones sound like someone else wrote them.
7. Agree on the shape, not the words.
Decide together how long, how funny, how private. Then do not show each other. The shape keeps you matched. The surprise is the whole point.
8. A structure that works.
Four movements, roughly equal:
Who you were before. What changed when you met them. What you know now that you did not. What you promise. Land on the promise. Always land on the promise.
9. What to cut.
Anything that begins “webster's dictionary defines”. Inside jokes more than two people will understand. Anything that needs a set up. Any sentence you would not say to them in a kitchen. The word “journey”.
10. If you get stuck.
Answer these three, write badly and fast, and edit later.
What is the most ordinary thing they do that you would miss most?
When did you know?
What are you most afraid of, and what do you promise about it?
A last thing.
Nobody remembers whether your vows were good. Everybody remembers whether they were yours.
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