My Vows

Most of you have probably watched our onsite AVP by the master himself, Jason Magbanua. He incorporated a portion of our vows in the short video, which made the video sweeter than it already was. I would wonder how he chose which part to include and which to exclude, sometimes I think he chose the part where our facial expressions looked the most romantic, or where there was very little funny expressions.

A friend of mine who did not attend the wedding because he was invited first for the wedding of our batchmate, Jaydrick in Davao, watched the AVP and asked me. "That's it?! That's your vow?" I told him of course not! I told him if he would have been there he would have heard the entire vows. Anyhow, our conversation got me to thinking if other people who've watched our video had the same thoughts regarding the vows.

Here is my vow:

"Art, I love you. As we exchange our vows today, I promise that I will strive to always give you the best of myself, while always accepting you the way you are. As your wife, I will always be here for you as we support each other’s goals and build on one another’s dreams. Finally, I promise to always love you, cherish you, & respect you in good times and in bad, with all I have to give and all that I am in the best way I know how -- completely and forever."

Except that, I said "always and forever" instead of "completely and forever" which is is really really really corny. Even if I have to say so myself. If you watch our video, you'd see I had a funny look in my face as I was saying the last line because I couldn't believe I was gonna say what I was about to say. But since that was the only thing I could think of then, I went ahead with the corniness of the line. I even missed the part where I was supposed to say "... in good times & in bad, with all I have to give and all that I am..." ARGH.

I wanted a long touching vow that would bring Art to tears, I wanted to use profound words and make it sound poetic as I love poetry so much. But because we were both too busy with the wedding preparations, we neglected to prepare our vows. We didn't even have our pre-wedding counseling, which bothers me until now, because we arrived in Zamboanga only a few days before our wedding, and our Pastor was out of town by the time we arrived, and he came back on the day of our wedding. I remembered about the vows an hour before the wedding, and I was panicking! Who could think straight with all the things I had to deal with that day. I could tell you about it but it would turn the blog entry into a novel. I could have easily cheated on the vows, I have sample vows from the internet but I couldn't bring myself to use other people's vows. There is even a part in Jason's video where I was trying to see if the long "usual" vows would work for me, but I decided against it. Because it wasn't me. I wanted to say something to Art that comes from me, to make it as real as it can be, something that I would say in the realms of our day to day living, and came up with that short vow.

Sometimes I think that I should have just written my vows and read them just like Art did so that I wouldn't have left anything out. But that day is done, the vows were exchanged, and we're married. So right now the best thing for me to do is to always remember my vows, especially when times get rough for us, most especially when going gets tough and tougher... To cherish and to respect, is easy to say, but both are big words. I've seen that it is very hard to do especially when things get sour into the marriage.

So, wish me luck. I'm pretty sure I'll need it. ;)