How to Write Your Wedding Vows: Let these Poets Guide You

 Stuck in a rut when it comes to finding the right words to say to your loved one on your big day? Let these romantic poets help you out!

“For richer or poorer, till death do us part.” These are the last lines to the most common wedding vows pronounced at the altar. However, for the love of your life, don’t you think they deserve to hear something more special? What better way than to write your own vows instead?

Writing your own vows can be nerve-racking. You want it to be sincere and beautiful, with generous helpings of romance to melt your love’s heart. However, if you’re not adept at stringing words into meaningful sentences, maybe you’d like a little help from the best weavers of words—poets. From the most contemporary poets, to spoken word poets, and the most notable classical poets, you won’t be at a loss for words. 

The best romantic poems to say at your wedding

Have a pen and paper ready and browse through our collection of passionate love poems to offer to your beloved. Learn from the masters, and soon, your love will be swooning to your words on your wedding day.

#1 Typewriter poet.

“I am yours. I am yours as the stars belong to the sky, and I am yours as the rivers belong to the sea. I am yours as your tears belong to your eyes, and I am yours as your lungs belong to the pattern in which you breathe.“ – Maps

Christopher Poindexter is a contemporary poet who became popular because of his Tumblr account, Remington Typewriter Poetry. Poindexter popularized typewriter poetry. He writes his poems in hemp paper using a typewriter, takes a picture of it, and posts the same online. He has published a compilation of his poems from 2013-2014, in a book entitled Naked Human.

Alternative:
“Do you remember the day we first made love? I didn’t know how much I loved you then. I knew I did, but I wasn’t aware of the intensity. I had no clue one day I would wear your spirit on my body like a blanket to keep me warm.” – Untitled

#2 Tumblr-famous poet.

“I love you, I do—you have my word. You have all my words.” – A Promise

Lang Leav is another contemporary poet whose poems gained popularity through the Tumblr platform. Lang is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is exhibited in her home city, Sydney, and overseas. She has published two poetry books: Love & Misadventures and Lullabies.

Alternative:
“When two souls fall in love, there is nothing else but the yearning to be close to the other. The presence that is felt through a hand held, a voice heard, or a smile seen. Souls do not have calendars or clocks, nor do they understand the notion of time or distance. They only know it feels right to be with one another.” – Souls

#3 Spoken word poet.

“I know about your rough edges and I have seen your perfect curves, and I will fit into any spaces you let me. If loving you means getting dirty, bring on the grime, I will leave this porcelain home behind. I’m used to twice a day relationships, but with you, I’ll take all the time.” – Love Letter from Toothbrush to Bicycle Tire

Sarah Kay is a spoken word poet born in New York. She began her poetry journey at the Bowery Poetry Club when she was 14. She now heads Project V.O.I.C.E., a program that aims to use spoken word poetry to inspire and educate the youth.

Alternative:
“And love will tell you, you are beautiful and mean it, over and over again. You are beautiful. When you first wake up, ‘you are beautiful.’ When you’ve just been crying, ‘you are beautiful.’ When you don’t want to hear it, ‘you are beautiful.’ When you don’t believe it, ‘you are beautiful.’ When nobody else will tell you, ‘you are beautiful.’ Love still thinks you are beautiful. But love is not perfect and will sometimes forget, when you need to hear it most, you are beautiful, do not forget this.” – When Love Arrives

#4 Victorian-era poet.

“If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love’s sake only. Do not say I love her for her smile, her look, her way of speaking gently. For a trick of thought that falls in well with mine… But love me for love’s sake, that evermore thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.” – Sonnet XIV

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is an English poet from the Victorian era. She gained popularity in England and the United States during the 1800s. Her most popular works are in Sonnets from the Portuguese, published in 1845.

Alternative:
“I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” – Sonnet XLIII

#5 Greatest poet of the 20th century.

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me all day. I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.”— I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

Pablo Neruda is a Nobel Prize awardee for Literature in 1971. He is known for his love poems and surrealist works. Some of his most popular ones are If You Forget Me and Saddest Poem. Gabriel Garcia Marquez once called him the greatest poet of the 20th century. Pablo Neruda is the pen name for Chilean poet Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.

Alternative:
“It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love, invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal, while I untangle my worries as if they were twisted nets.” – It’s Good to Feel You Are Close to Me

#6 Prolific American poet.

“I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love, and how you gave me everything you had, and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever, your leg, my leg, your arm, my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.” — Raw with Love

Charles Bukowski is an American poet and novelist with thousands of poems to his name. His works deals with the drudgery of daily work, the ordinary life of Americans, alcohol, and his relationships with women. He also wrote hundreds of short stories. Born in Germany, Bukowski’s real name is Heinrich Karl Bukowski.

Alternative:
“It is usually mid-afternoon and quiet, and getting dressed we talk about what else there might be to do, but being together solves most of it, for as long as those things stay solved, in the history of women and man, it’s different for each- for me, it’s splendid enough to remember…” – The Shower

Tip: Listen to the recording of Bukowski himself reading it, and you’ll understand.

#7 Bohemian poet.

“But all that touches us, you and me, plays us together, like the bow of a violin that from two strings draw forth one voice. On what instrument are we strung? What musician is playing us? Oh sweet song.”— Love Song

Ranier Maria Rilke is a Bohemian-Austrian poet whose most famous work is Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of 10 letters written by Rilke to a young 19-year-old poet named Franz Xaver Kappus. Three years after Rilke’s death, Kappus published the letters in his honor. Rilke’s writing style is characterized by the use of metonymy and metaphors, as evidenced in Love Song.

Alternative:
“Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another, it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake.” – Letters to a Young Poet, 7th Letter

#8 Romantic modernist poet.

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want no world (for beautiful, you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.” – I Carry Your Heart with Me

E.E. Cummings is an American poet born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a prolific writer with almost 2,900 poems, four plays, and two autobiographical novels. His writing style is avant-garde, bypassing rules in forms and meters. Most of his works are sonnets and free verse poems. The E.E. on his name stands for Edward Estlin.

Alternative:
“I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. I like your body. I like what it does. I like its hows. I like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling-firm-smoothness and which I will again and again and again kiss, I like kissing this and that of you, I like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs. And possibly I like the thrill of under me you so quite new.” – I Like My Body

Preparing vows for your own wedding can be a daunting experience. You’ll think it’s just so much easier to go with the regular vows, but why take the usual route when you can be some much more romantic?

Enlist the help of these poets to make writing your unique wedding vows a little bit easier. Your partner will love you even more when they realize you went the extra mile to make your wedding vows extra special. Best wishes!