Our Wedding Vows

Sean and I wrote our wedding vows one summer’s evening over a bottle of berry wine, as the sun sank behind the oak trees and mother birds tucked their children into stick and found-yarn nests. We had just finished a meal that required three trips to deliver to our wooden outdoor table. The children next door were playing on the swing set, their voices wildly leaping over blades of grass into our backyard.  We tried holding on to the evening as long as we could, feeling it slip between our fingers like moisture over the pale green plants of our yard. We had a month until our wedding and we were both feeling the pressure of the last minute things we had to do, contradict with our lack of motivation to act. I brought my laptop outside and told Sean, “This is it. No more procrastinating. Today we will write our vows, damn it.” And so we began…

It is a pretty funny night to look back on. We both suffered terribly from writers block, we couldn’t agree on repetition and stanzas, Sean didn’t appreciate my passion for alliteration, I couldn’t stop laughing at his ridiculous pretend vows, and by the end of one bottle of wine neither of felt satisfied. So I asked Sean, “well what is it we do together?” And we finally stopped thinking like song writers and creative writers, and we simply put it all out there: travel, family, singing and playing. That is who we are. On the day of our wedding, I looked into Sean’s eyes and eagerly said our vows. I didn’t think about the process it took to write the vows, I was too busy imagining the life we would share living them out.

They went like this:

I want to see the world with you,
to explore with you,
and to seek adventures with you.
And in all the places we discover
I want to live boldly and intentionally with you.

I want to build my life with you,
To care for you
and to provide for you.
And in all of our moments as husband and wife,
I want to live joyfully and courageously with you.

I want to share my love with you,
With action and with words.
I want to sing and dance with you.
And every day we share together
I want to live peacefully and gently with you.