A couple friends over the last few years have asked Marni and I for our wedding vows. I asked Marni if she’d mind if I posted them. Her reply was excellent: “Are you sure you want all that extra accountability?” Well, since we’re already accountable to God and those who attended our wedding, we figure it can’t be that much scarier to add you. Here they are — you’ll recognize that they are a mixture of the traditional vows with some of our own thoughts. I also should add that we are indebted to Pastor Tom Steller and his wife Julie, who were willing to share their vows with us before we wrote our own. Towards the bottom you might recognize Marni’s allusion to Rom. 15:6, which is also where we got the title for our book.
By God’s grace and in His name, I, Alex, take thee, Marni, to be my wife. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until we are parted by death. I promise to be yours exclusively, a loving and faithful husband, forsaking all others, and to honor you above all except God.
I recognize today with thanksgiving that you are the greatest treasure that God has given me—given to complete me, and that I might complete you. I cannot become what God would have me be apart from you. I love so many things about you, dearest Marni. Your tender heart, your warm smile, your ever positive attitude, your intelligence, your tendency to be on top of things. It is staggering that you would agree to marry me. In learning to love you, my heart is enlarged. I marry not just because I love you, but so that I can love you.
I promise to love and respect you as a woman, and to honor you as my partner and fellow heir of the grace of life. I promise to take with utmost seriousness my responsibilities to you as a Christian husband, to pray for you, to protect you, to provide for you, to comfort you, to encourage you, and to always seek your deepest well-being. By God’s grace, I promise to listen to you, to spend time with you, to tell you what I’m thinking, to include you, and to be there for you. I promise to deny myself when we discover our differences as we live together. I promise to cherish you above all others and above achievements. I promise to raise with you any children God gives us, and to train them in the way they should go.
I pray that I will make you happy by appreciating and accepting you as God made you and by enjoying and appreciating your love. I pray that God will enable me to preserve and increase your enjoyment of God so that your heart can overflow to bless others. I pray that God would increase our capacity to enjoy Him through the love he builds in us towards each other for as many years as He gives us. I pray that we will both live and die in a way that makes much of Jesus.
By God’s grace and in His name, I, Marni, take thee, Alex, to be my husband. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until we are parted by death. I promise to be yours exclusively, a loving and faithful wife, forsaking all others, and to honor you above all except God.
Alex, blessed am I among women! You are the man I have prayed for my whole life. I am continually awed and delighted by your strong leadership, your intelligence, your sensitivity, your wit, your tender affection, and your intensity as you strive to know and please God. I am blessed by how you move toward me and how we grow closer in difficult situations. You make me so happy! My sweet Alex, you are God’s precious gift to me. It is my desire that our covenant becomes more important than we are as individuals, so that when I love you and deny myself for you, I am loving myself.
I promise to love and you respect you and submit to your headship intelligently and joyfully, trusting your leadership. I promise to uphold you in prayer, to support you, to encourage you, to comfort you, to respect you, to be your helpmate in all situations of life, hoping always to be that refuge where you might find rest. I promise to keep careful watch over our household, endeavoring to make it a happy and pleasant place to live. Should God bless us with children, I promise to continue to honor you as my highest priority after God, and to raise them to love the Lord and respect you.
I pray that we would each seek daily to delight in and commit ourselves more fully to Christ, our Shepherd and Savior. I pray that God would use us in each other’s lives as He sanctifies us. May the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant us to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord we may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.