How to Write Wedding Vows: The Five-Part Structure, the Right Length, and What I Learned Filming Hundreds of Them

I have filmed several hundred sets of wedding vows, which means I have heard them twice: once live, and once in the edit, where you learn exactly which sentences held the room and which ones the room politely waited through. The best vows I have ever recorded were almost all the same length, the same shape, and read from the same kind of paper. That is not a coincidence, and it is the whole reason this post exists.

The numbers first

Two to three minutes each. That is 250 to 350 words, because a nervous person reads at about 130 words a minute, slower than they talk. Under two minutes feels like a toast. Over four, the guests in the back row start to shift, and the edit gets hard. Agree on a range with your partner, not the words, just the length, because a ninety-second vow followed by a six-minute one reads as a mismatch even when both are lovely.

Start three months before the wedding. Have a full draft by two months out, which is the date Altessa puts on your planning timeline for exactly this task. Read it aloud to one trusted person at one month. Print it at two weeks. None of that takes long; it just cannot happen the night before, and it very often does.

The five-part structure

Every vow that has ever made me put the camera down for a second had these five parts, in roughly this order.

One: the opening line, said to them, with their name. Not to the guests, not to the officiant. “Sam, the first thing I noticed about you was…” or “Sam, I have been trying to write this for three months, and here is what I know.” The name does something physical to the person hearing it. Use it.

Two: what you admire, specifically. Not “you are kind,” which is true of everyone being married that afternoon. The specific version: “You are the person who learned my grandmother's recipe from a video call so she could taste it one more time.” One or two of these. Specific beats sweeping every single time.

Three: one story. Not the one everyone knows, not the proposal, not how you met. The small one. The Tuesday. The time the car died and you laughed in the rain for twenty minutes. The story is where the guests fall in love with the two of you, because it is the only part they did not already know.

Four: the promises. Three to five, concrete, in the future tense. At least one should be funny and at least one should be hard. “I promise to always let you have the window seat” sits next to “I promise to tell you the truth even when it costs me the argument.” The funny one earns the laugh that lets the room breathe; the hard one is the actual vow.

Five: the close. One sentence, said to them, that could stand alone. “I choose you, today and every day it gets to be today.” Then stop. The single most common mistake I see is a great close followed by two more paragraphs.

What to cut

Inside jokes nobody else can follow: one is charming, three is a private conversation with an audience. Anything about exes, past relationships, or how bad things were before. Lists of adjectives. Anything you would be embarrassed to hear read back at your tenth anniversary. And, gently, anything copied from a movie. A hundred people have seen the movie.

What I learned from behind the camera

Read from paper, not a phone. A phone screen dims, autocorrects, buzzes with a text from your aunt, and photographs like a phone in every single frame. Card stock, folded once, held at chest height so your face stays up. Do not laminate it; it glares. Give a copy to the officiant, who is holding the backup for both of you.

Face your partner. The instinct under pressure is to turn to the guests like it is a speech. It is not a speech. Everyone in the room came to watch you say this to one person, and the microphone is pointed at that person anyway.

Slow down, and let the pauses happen. On the recording, the pause after a line is where the emotion lives. Couples who rush through to get it over with sound, in the edit, like they wanted it over with. If you cry, do not apologize for it and do not laugh it off. Breathe, and go on. Nobody has ever watched their wedding film and wished they had cried less.

Practice out loud, once, in front of one person who will tell you the truth about the length. Not memorized. Memorized vows come out flat and terrified. Read, well, from a page you know, is the goal.

And ask whoever is running sound how you will be heard. A lavalier on the officiant and one partner picks up both of you at a normal ceremony distance. Outdoors in wind, or in a big room, a handheld passed between you for the vows is the difference between two hundred guests hearing this and twenty.

A few opening lines that work

“[Name], I want to tell you what I see when I look at you.” “[Name], I did not believe in this until you.” “[Name], I have known you for [number] years, and here is what has never changed.” “[Name], I am going to make you some promises, and I want everyone here to hold me to them.” Pick one, or write your own, but start with the name.

Questions people ask

How long should wedding vows be? Two to three minutes, 250 to 350 words. Who goes first? Traditionally the first partner named on the invitation, but most officiants will ask you; if one of you is more nervous, that person goes first and gets it over with. Can I read them? Yes, and you should. Should we share them with each other beforehand? Most couples do not, and I would not, but agree on the length and the tone so nobody is surprised by a comedy set following an elegy.

Do we have to write our own? No. Traditional vows are beautiful and take ninety seconds, and plenty of couples do traditional vows at the ceremony and read personal letters to each other in private before it, which the photographer and I love because it is the most honest moment of the day. Are vows legally required? The legal part is the declaration of intent, the “I do,” and some officiants need both partners to say it aloud; the personal vows are for you. When in the ceremony do vows happen? After the readings and the officiant's words, before the rings, roughly twenty minutes into a thirty-minute ceremony.

What if I am a terrible writer? Then write badly, on purpose, for a first draft, and fix it in the second. Vows are not judged on prose. They are judged on whether you meant them, and a room can tell. What if we are having a short engagement? Three months is plenty; two is fine; the month-by-month checklist shows where they fit no matter how long you have. And what do we do with them after? Print two copies on good paper and frame one. They are the only part of the wedding you wrote yourself.

Armin Korsos is a filmmaker who spent nine years shooting weddings before building Altessa (altessa.studio), an all-in-one wedding planning workspace that replaces the spreadsheet.