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Writing Your Wedding Vows the Way Poets Do
By
Chris Simeral
Let’s face it, not many of us have the kind of
skills or experience to write truly poetic wedding
vows. Or do we? Here’s the truth: Even if you don’t
know Dylan Thomas from Bob Dylan, and you’re pretty
sure T.S. Elliot was that guy who wrote the words to
Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Cats,” all is not lost! In
fact, there are ways to learn to write the words you
want. With four simple steps, you can take what you
feel in your heart and make it come out as sweetly
as any Shakespearian sonnet.
Step 1: Decide on a theme
Finding a theme should arguably be the easiest part
of writing poetry for your wedding vows. But you
don’t want to be stuck with something trite or
cliché, even though the theme of romantic love is
probably the oldest known for poetry. There are lots
of ways to avoid writing the same old “roses are
red, violets are blue” type of poem. One trick the
pros use is to envision what a newspaper article
about your relationship would say. Would it discuss
how and where you met? How your relationship has
stayed strong, even during the hard times? What your
love has meant to one another? Since newspaper
articles get right to the point, this exercise can
help you pick out an overriding theme for your vows.
Step 2: Allow time for reverie
No, not “revelry” (hopefully that will be what your
wedding day is all about), but reverie – a quiet
time devoted to a kind of dreamy meditation. Try
some tricks for allowing yourself time to truly
think about your poem -- and not just those things
that allow you to “act like a poet.” Go for a walk
alone, listen to instrumental music, or simply shut
the door to a room in your house and ask not to be
disturbed. The most important thing to remember with
any of these methods is that you don’t let other
people interrupt your time.
Step 3: Choose your topic
Theme, as discussed above, is the driving idea
behind your poem. The topic, however, is the
specific vehicle you use to express the theme. While
finding the theme should be the easiest part of
writing a poem for your wedding, finding a topic
that isn’t hackneyed and trite can be a challenge.
For instance, love is your theme, but the beauty of
your betrothed’s eyes may be the topic. You are
using the example of her eyes as the symbol for your
love. The key is to find something new. There’s
something that makes your chosen one special, be it
appearance, wit, or style. That’s the topic you want
to choose. Poets use tools like automatic writing,
journals, or “dream work” to come up with topics for
their prose. (These tools are all discussed in
detail in the home-study course I put together for
couples personalizing their wedding vows – visit
http://www.WeddingVowToolkit.com
for more info.) But
anything that allows you to spark your creativity
can suffice if you’re short on time.
Step 4: Pick Your Style
As many different poems as there are, there are
almost an equal number of styles in which they are
written. There are traditional forms, modern, post
modern, and many more. You can work on fitting your
rough draft poem into one of these many forms, or
you can go with no form at all. The benefit of
working on an art form is that there are no hard and
fast rules on what the end product must look like.
Perhaps you’d like to try your hand at penning your
vows in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. Or, to
go a completely different route, maybe
“experimental” is right up your alley. No matter
what you choose, just make sure it fits your style.
After all, personalizing your wedding vows means
just that – they should be personal, not forced to
fit into a style that just isn’t “you.”
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