What feelings come to mind when you think about writing your wedding vows?
Stress? Anxiety? Panic?
Every bride I’ve worked with has felt at least one of these emotions when they imagined having to write their own wedding vows.
This is where I come in to help. I’m a wedding vow writer—AKA your panic attack antidote. I collaborate with stressed out brides and anxious grooms to calm nerves while putting their heart into words.
Are you planning to write your own wedding vows but enter panic mode at the simple thought of having to put pen to paper? Follow these tips to feel less stress while you write beautifully custom wedding vows.
Make a Plan
When you have a plan, you often feel more prepared and less stressed. Design a strategy for how to write your custom wedding vows in a way that fits your personality.
For example, do you feel comforted by having time scheduled in your calendar? Is where you write your vows an important aspect of being productive?
Consider your needs and plan vow writing time around how you work best. You can also reference our vow writing timeline guide for more planning ideas.
Divide and Conquer
Any task on its own can feel overwhelming. To ditch that daunting feeling, take the large task of vow writing and break it into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Vow writing typically consists of these six parts: brainstorming, asking yourself the right questions, writing the first draft, editing your wedding vows, writing the final draft, and practicing reading your wedding vows.
Tackle each of these tasks one at a time instead of trying to write your wedding vows as one large project. You’ll avoid overwhelm and make real progress when you identify and follow the individual steps of vow writing.
Breathe and Be Present
Mindfulness is a practice that can help with wedding vow writing. When you take deep breaths, you become more focused on the present moment.
This helps because your mind is no longer racing with anxious thoughts like, what if what I write isn’t good enough? Or, will I be able to read my wedding vows without getting too emotional?
You don’t need to be weighed down by these unproductive thoughts. Instead, breathe and be present. You’ll be in a stronger state of mind to write your custom wedding vows.
Talk Before You Write
When I work with couples, I ask them to verbally tell me about their relationship. Often it’s easier for people to tell a story than to write one.
Try to interview yourself. Turn on the voice recording feature on your phone and ask yourself questions that could spark material for your wedding vows.
Here are a few questions that might help:
· When you think about your fiancé, what makes you most grateful?
· What is uniquely special about your relationship?
· How did you know this was the person you wanted to share your life with?
· What are your dreams for your marriage?
Once you’ve finished interviewing yourself, transcribe the audio recording. You now have authentic material to edit into custom wedding vows.
Hire Help
You don’t need to conquer this battle alone. Hire help to write your custom wedding vows. As a professional vow writer and creator of Wedding Words, I collaborate with couples to remove the stress that’s often associated with writing unique wedding vows.
You might be wondering what it’s like to work with a vow writer. The feedback I’ve received from my clients is that it’s removed all their stress and anxiety and made them more excited to read their vows.
My goal is for you to focus on relishing in the details of your love story while you let me worry about how to frame those details into perfectly polished wedding vows.
There are no fill-in-the-blank templates or exhausting questionnaires. Everything is 100% custom written.
We have a video call where I ask the right questions that are necessary in learning about your relationship and dreams for your marriage.
I then write the first draft of your wedding vows and send a copy to you for review. I encourage you to provide as much feedback as you have. What are the parts you really adore? Which words don’t sound like you? Are there any details you forgot to mention on our video call that you’d like to add? This is the editing phase.
Once you’ve provided feedback, I make edits and return an updated draft of your wedding vows for you to review.
Once a finalized version of your wedding vows has been approved by you, I then create a custom video. This video provides general public speaking tips along with feedback for how to confidently and comfortably deliver your wedding vows.
When you start to feel a panic attack coming on at the thought of vow writing, remember these tips. You’ll feel the anxiety wash away and the creativity takes over as you write your own custom wedding vows.