1. 5 sensational tips for great vows and perfect officiants

Form a Bond
When you meet with your officiant, be open and honest. If he or she hasn't been in your life for years, you'll need to allow him or her to learn about you as a couple in order to include some personal elements in the ceremony.

Speak From the Heart
If you're writing your own vows, make them funny and warm, but not cryptic or embarrassing: they should reflect the magnitude of the commitment you are about to make. Be concise and get to the core of what marrying that person means to you. Save some words for the toast (and the honeymoon night, of course). Remember, less is oftentimes more.

Plan Ahead
When all is said and done, your vows are the most important and meaningful aspect of your wedding. Don't wait until the last minute to get started. Set aside one to two months to work on them and have the final version ready at least two days before the wedding. Make your promise as beautiful and unique as the love that you are celebrating. Speak now, or you may have to forever hold your peace.

Include Your Whole Crew
The ceremony is a great time to honour important family members and close friends who aren't in your wedding party. Depending on your type of service, have your moms (or aunts, or uncles, or cousins) light the unity candle; choose several short readings performed by several special readers; ask a close friend to witness the marriage license or ketubah signing.

Dole Out the Dough
If you're having a Jewish ceremony and hiring a rabbi from outside your congregation, expect to pay a fee or donation. Discuss this with your rabbi at your first meeting. Since 18 is the number for life, many couples make donations in variations on that number.

2. Vows and readings - 10 steps to writing your own vows

Talk to Your Officiant
Before you get carried away and start spilling your heart out on the page, do your homework. Check with your officiant to make sure that it's okay to pen your own promise -- some religions do not allow for variation on traditional vows. Even if you've gotten the go-ahead, it's imperative that you pass your vows by him or her once you've finished. Your officiant may raise faith-based questions or objections to your wording, or contribute a thought or quote that might make your vows even more emotive.

Suss Out a Strategy
Decide if you'll write the vows together or alone. If you go solo, you may want to take turns running them by each other before the big day. (If you want to keep the vows a surprise, run them by a trusted loved one). Make sure that you both write approximately the same length of text so that one person isn't rambling on for five minutes while the other says ten words. If you choose to make it a joint task, pen a mutual vow that you both take. Or, create a fill-in-the blank model for each one of you to personalize.
Personalized vows can be funny and warm, but they should still be serious about the marriage commitment.

Take a Trip Down Memory Lane
The best self-composed vows are highly personal, with a few vivid, heartfelt details. Make a date with your honey for dinner or breakfast in bed and reminisce about your own private love story. When was the first time you used the word love? What are your most tender memories of one another? Has your sweetie helped you through a crisis? What challenges do you envision in your future? List the qualities you most admire in your loved one, and characteristics that he/she brings out in you. Incorporate some of these recollections in your vows.

Borrow Freely
Find your muse by reading poetry, love stories, spiritual texts -- even by watching romantic movies. Jot down words and phrases that capture your feelings, and use them as a springboard. There's no such thing as plagiarism when it comes to affairs of the heart. Park yourself with a tub of popcorn in front of the American Movie Classics network; throw on some songsters of love for some unforgettable lyrics to add to your collection; go back and take a look at your favourite authors' works -- including your childhood favourites.

Consult Tradition
You may fancy yourselves non-traditional, unconventional hipsters, but remember that traditional vows have endured for a reason. These timeworn, polished words are not just moving, succinct reflections on the meaning of love and commitment -- they are emblems of the nuptial ceremony's public, communal nature and a way of linking married folk of past, present, and future. Get your hands on the standard vows for your religion(s) or faith(s) -- then see what strikes a chord.

Pour Your Hearts Out
As with all writing, you must eventually put pen to paper. Gather all the threads you've collected -- memories, quotes, passages, and reflections -- and get to work. Words that should enter your mind -- and appear in your vows -- include respect, cherish, love, support, commit, pledge, and promise. Personalized vows can be funny and warm, but they should still be serious about the marriage commitment.

Include Your Audience
Don't make your vows so personal that only the two of you will understand their meaning. Make sure the emotions and experiences you touch upon are identifiable and universal -- you've invited guests to witness your bond, not to endure a baffling performance art monologue.

Keep 'em Short and Sweet
Your wedding vows are the most important element of your ceremony, but that doesn't mean they should be long-winded. Your chosen words should pack a punch -- just like your love -- and should reflect your clarity of vision, sincerity of emotion, and certainty of will. Run your finished product by a trustworthy friend or family member with polished editing skills.

Do a Run-Through
Yes, your vows are for you and your honey -- but they'll also be heard by your entire wedding, so be sure they sound good when spoken. Practice out loud, alone or with a trusted friend. Also watch out for tongue twisters and unruly sentences (you may run out of breath -- you'll be nervous enough as it is). Make your final edits and consider copying your words onto stationery or a beautiful card, so that you and your sweetie will have it in print for years to come.

Make a Cheat Sheet
If you think you can memorize your vows, go for it! If you're likely to draw a blank (as most nervous couples are), we're giving you permission to cheat: Have a copy ready to read from or have the officiant read them for you to repeat. You probably won't want to pull out a sheet of paper from the corset of your gown or jacket pocket, so assign your maid of honour and/or best man the duty of holding the vows until the moment arrives.

3. Vows and readings - a selection of love poems and passages

From "Invitation to Love," by Paul Laurence Dunbar, in I Hear a Symphony: African Americans Celebrate Love; eds. Paula Woods and Felix Liddell:

Come when my heart is full of grief,
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry

From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats:

But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

From "Somewhere I Have Never Travelled," by E. E. Cummings in Complete Poems: 1904-1962:

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

From "Sonnet 116," in Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken

From "How Do I Love Thee?", by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in One Hundred and One Classic Love Poems:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach

From Beloved, by Toni Morrison:

Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colours. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gathers me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

From "A Poem of Friendship" in Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni:

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak.

From "The Book of Ruth," 1: 16-17 in The Bible

For whither thou goest, I will go;
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people;
And thy God my God.

4. Vows and readings - some favourites

Readings
Organizing a wedding is like producing a musical, complete with singing, dancing, and declarations of love. Like the gorgeous words in your vows, readings are a wonderful way to express yourself -- and to include important people in your ceremony.

You might choose several long readings and have just a few readers, or select five or six short passages and include more of your nearest and dearest. You and your fiancé can also read alternating verses of a poem or different prose passages.

Some wedding readings are definitely overdone; you might want to delve deeper to find pieces your guests haven't heard. Here's where to start your search.

Religious Texts
The Bible is rich with classic passages -- your officiant can point you in the right direction. Review your choices with a religious officiant first: Some houses of worship may have restrictions Though a reading from the Song of Songs is a good choice, conservatives may consider it inappropriate.

Poetry
Shakespeare's love sonnets are wonderful to read aloud. Accessible modern poets include e. e. Cummings, Pablo Neruda, Walt Whitman, and Nikki Giovanni. Other options? Check out the deeply moving William Butler Yeats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese".

Historical Lit
If you like prose, the pantheon of world literature is rich with the love-struck and philosophical. The Kama Sutra and Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" are popular options. Anecdotes by Confucius or Gandhi, not necessarily about romantic love but about the striving of the human spirit, can be inspiring, moving, and appropriate. Browse books and short stories you adore to find passages that get across your message about love and your marriage.

Love Letters
Passages from love letters (from writer James Joyce to his wife, Nora, or Simone De Beauvoir's missives to Jean-Paul Sartre, for example) beautifully express strong feelings. If you'll have two or more readings, consider having a man read from a letter to a female lover, then have a woman read from a note to a male lover.

Children's Books
Regress a little. Your favourite poems or storybooks from childhood can have a very stirring and emotional effect. A selection as simple as the poem "The Owl and the Pussycat", something from Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses", and other classics can resound with amazing meaning and symbolism within the context of a marriage ceremony. Have a youngster read the passage -- there won't be a dry eye in the house.

Movie Moments & Sentimental Songs
Look to pop culture for inspiration. If the idea of incorporating literature into the ceremony seems forced and insincere, feel free to draw from movie quotes and song lyrics. There are some great declarations of love in "The English Patient," "Moonstruck," and "Casablanca." Alternatively, the sentiments expressed in any love song, whatever the style, will be breathtaking when spoken aloud.

Vows
We've rounded up some great vows that inspire us, make us laugh, and, on occasion, cause us to sigh deeply as a dreamy expression crosses our faces. But before you start writing your own "Ode to the Love Story of Bob and Sue," you'll have to get permission from your officiant. If you're allowed to stray from the traditional, then you should do it. You don't have to be an ace with words -- many brides and grooms borrow from famous quotes, movies, and myths for their vows.

Get started by sifting through love letters, favourite books of love poetry; be keen to songs you hear on the radio; and review spiritual texts to help you pick and choose the right words. Whether you want to get your guests giggling or grabbing for the Kleenex, penning your promise will truly personalize your wedding. To help you get started, we've got 5 examples of vows

Groom
In your eyes, I have found my home.
In your heart, I have found my love.
In your soul, I have found my mate.
With you, I am whole, full, alive.
You make me laugh. You let me cry.
You are my breath, my every heartbeat.

I am yours.
You are mine.
Of this we are certain.
You are lodged in my heart.
The small key is lost.
You must stay there forever.

Bride
You are my inspiration and my soul's fire.
You are the magic of my days.
You help me laugh, you teach me love.
You provide a safe place for me, unlike I've ever known.
You free me to sing my own song.
You are more of an amazement to me, each day I rediscover you.
You are my greatest boon.

I am yours.
You are mine.
Of this we are certain.
You are lodged in my heart.
The small key is lost.
You must stay there forever.

Groom
I love you for your beauty, your intelligence, your kindness...and for the way you always know how to make me feel so special. So on top of all the other vows that I will make to you on our wedding day, I also vow to always appreciate how lucky I am to have someone who makes me feel the way you do and to continue to try as hard as I can to make you feel as special as you make me feel, forever and ever.

Bride
You have been my best friend, mentor, playmate, confidant, and my greatest challenge. But most importantly, you are the love of my life and you make me happier than I could ever imagine and more loved than I ever thought possible.... You have made me a better person as our love for one another is reflected in the way I live my life. So I am truly blessed to be a part of your life, which as of today becomes our life together.

Groom
I promise to love and care for you and I will try in every way to be worthy of your love.
I will always be honest with you, kind, patient, and forgiving.
I promise to try to be on time.
But most of all, I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I love you.

Bride
I promise to love and care for you and I will try in every way to be worthy of your love.
I will always be honest with you, kind, patient, and forgiving.
I promise to keep a sense of humour.
But most of all, I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I love you.

Groom
I promise to encourage your compassion,
Because that is what makes you unique and wonderful.
I promise to nurture your dreams,
Because through them your soul shines.
I promise to help shoulder our challenges,
For there is nothing we cannot face if we stand together.
I promise to be your partner in all things,
Not possessing you, but working with you as a part of the whole.
Lastly, I promise to you perfect love and perfect trust,
For one lifetime with you could never be enough.
This is my sacred vow to you, my equal in all things.

Bride
I promise to encourage your individuality,
Because that is what makes you unique and wonderful.
I promise to nurture your dreams,
Because through them your soul shines.
I promise to help shoulder our challenges,
Because through them we'll emerge stronger.
I promise to be your partner in all things,
Not possessing you, but working with you as a part of the whole.
I promise to share with you the joys of life,
Because with you they will be that much sweeter.
Lastly, I promise to you perfect love and perfect trust,
For one lifetime with you could never be enough.
This is my sacred vow to you, my equal in all things.

Groom & Bride
You are my lover and my teacher,
You are my model and my accomplice,
And you are my true counterpart.
I will love you, hold you, and honour you,
I will respect you, encourage you, and cherish you,
In health and sickness,
Through sorrow and success,
For all the days of my life.