Customer Reviews

Diane Warner's Complete Book of Wedding Vows: Hundreds of Ways to Say "I Do" (Hal Leonard Wedding Essentials)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's difficult to recommend one book of wedding vows over the dozens of others, as, for the most part, they contain primarily, the same material. It's sort of an "If you've read one, you've read them all" scenario. However, Diane Warner has certainly established herself as one of the most prolific writers in the wedding genre, and I believe also, one of the best.

So what makes this book better than the others? More and more weddings today are moving away from "traditional" vows. Warner has assembled here, a broad mixture of vows from various categories. Though the first chapter does indeed provide examples of traditional vows ranging from Jewish, Hindu and numerous Christian faiths, the other ten chapters are devoted to non-traditional vows, e.g. second marriages, including children, older couples, ring vows, theme weddings and so on.

At just barely over 200 pages, the book is hardly all-inclusive, and the reader may not find precisely what they are looking for, but this book gives countless good starting points. You may be able to slightly alter something you find here to make a perfect fit for your wedding, or you may find further useful resources in the bibliography.

There are dozens of books available, anyone of which may contain exactely what you're looking for, but if you want a single volume to point you in the right direction, this one is better than most.

Monty Rainey
Wedding Ministry by Design

This is one of the books that has been on my shelf for years, and that I use regularly when writing a ceremony for one of my couples. It's a good resource and sparks ideas. Along with Diane's Contemporary Guide to Wedding Ceremonies, Judith Johnson's Wedding Ceremony Planner and a couple of others, my wedding ceremony-writing library is complete.

This book is a wonderful help for couples choosing the correct wedding vow and ring vow. We enjoyed reading it and learned fascinating traditions about weddings. A good read.

I purchased this book because it promised to help me write my wedding ceremony. My fiance and I are a rather non-traditional couple, and the reviews as well as a skimming of the content suggested the book would help with all the spoken parts of the ceremony. I wish I had skimmed better, as I find the book rather offensive. It considers a Buddhist mala the same thing as a rosary, and suggests ceremonies involving tying hands/shoulders/bodies together are all handfastings. The book on the outside suggests that it is complete and covers all things wedding ceremony(as well as any book can), however give no mention to religous values outside of "popular" religions (Abrahamic, Buddhist, and Hindu). Anything that appears to be outside this realm is merely suggesting robbing ideas from another culture/religion, and sticking it into a "traditional" ceremony. I find this book extremely offensive, and would not reccomend it to anyone. The same information (and more accurate) can be found on Wikipedia without spending any money.

There were a lot of classic vows and some more original, but this book was not very helpful for the wedding I was helping plan.

Judith Johnson's "The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day" was perfect for our needs, however. Everyone was raving about the beautiful cerermony =)

I have found this book to be a helpful reference book for my wedding clients. It probably is not the be all and end all of best ever books but it certainly does provide much helpful information.

I bought this book looking for ideas for vows. We had a ceremony largely written and just needed to figure out vows. Despite reading the book, we are no closer. It was completely useless. If you want some bland and generic wedding ceremonies, get the book. If you already have some idea of what to do for the ceremony and just need help with vows, go elsewhere!