Couples prefer personal wedding vows

USA Today

How now, wedding vow?

With the summer wedding season on many a romantic's brain, a check with those in the "dearly beloved" business shows Kahlil Gibran's scripture-esque poetry has paled. Likewise, dear lines from "The Little Prince," "The Velveteen Rabbit" or Rainer Maria Rilke. Even the Bible is losing ground on the wedding aisle.

Now, engaged couples download florid prose from Internet sites. Tony De Vito, a Miami salesman who "writes from my own heart," says 15,000 people have clicked on his www.brightpoetry.com to check out vows from the "Mushy" to "Formal."

Pastors say couples now want even religious vows to emphasize their personal views rather than the blessings of church, community and history.

Bride's magazine editor Millie Martini Bratten says many couples prefer to start their lives together with "guidelines, not a straitjacket of rules."

In a recent reader survey, Bride's found 72 percent will marry in a house of worship, but 66 percent will edit "obey" out of the vows and 26 percent will write their own.

But William Doherty, director of University of Minnesota's Marriage and Family Therapy Program, decries today's "consumer marriage." He likens it to a contract like a variable-rate mortgage "based almost entirely on whether our personal needs are met." He sees this glorified in vows such as "As long as we both shall 'love' ... not 'live.'"