I want to start by saying something reassuring: you do not have to be a writer to write good wedding vows.
The best vows I have ever heard were not the most eloquent. They were the most honest. They were specific. They were the kind of thing only one person in the world could have said to only one other person in the world.
That is what you are going for.
Start with a story, not a statement.
The instinct most people have is to open with something like "From the moment I met you, I knew." And look, if that is genuinely true and those are genuinely your words, go for it. But most of the time that kind of opening is a placeholder. It is what we say when we have not yet found what we actually want to say.
Instead, try starting with something specific. A moment. A Tuesday. The first time you saw them do something small and thought, yes, this is the person I want to be around forever. Specific details do more emotional work than any sweeping declaration.
Answer three simple questions.
If you are staring at a blank page, here is a framework that actually works.
What do you love about this person that nobody else might notice? Not the obvious things. The real things.
What have they changed about the way you see the world or yourself?
What are you actually promising them? Not in a legal sense. In a real, human, this is who I am committing to be for you sense.
Your answers to those three questions, in your own words, are your vows.
Read them out loud while you write them.
This sounds obvious but most people skip it. Vows are spoken, not read. Something can look beautiful on paper and be nearly impossible to get through out loud because your voice breaks at a sentence you did not expect to break at.
Practice saying them. Not to perform them, but to know them well enough that your voice can hold.
Keep them a similar length to your partner's.
You do not have to match word for word, but if one of you speaks for four minutes and one speaks for forty-five seconds, it creates a strange imbalance in the room. Check in with each other on general length without sharing the actual words if you want to keep them a surprise.
On keeping them a secret beforehand.
Some couples share their vows with each other ahead of time. Some do not. Neither approach is wrong. What I will say is that if you are the kind of person who tends toward anxiety, there is something genuinely calming about knowing your partner has also written something real and thought it through. You can be surprised by the words while still being confident in the intention.
Write what you would want to hear from them. Then say it.
With love, Verla