Required wedding vows in Minnesota

Question:

 

Hi, Reverend Tomkin,

 

Thank you so much for your Minnesota wedding planning website! My brand-new fiance and I will probably get married in Minneapolis next year, and in my early poking around, your site has come up repeatedly and it's a wealth of information. We'll be using your wife's MN marriage preparation classes this summer, by the way!

 

I have one question that I haven't been able to answer by Googling, which is what are the standard vows for the state of Minnesota? I'm trying to decide whether we'll write our own vows or use something standard, but there seems to be a lot of options! Is there a legal requirement of certain things that need to be promised or said, whether the marriage is at the courthouse? Part of the reason I ask is that a friend was married at a courthouse in Tennessee and was expecting a secular civil ceremony but their standard vows do including "swearing before God" or something along those lines. I'm just trying to figure out the standard baseline and decide whether we'll use those or write our own.

 

Thank you so much!

 

Minnesota Bride

Answer:

Dear MB,

Congratulations on your engagement!

Good question - in Minnesota, you can use any vows that you find work for you, and they do not have to include "swearing before God". Just for comparison, the traditional (non-religious) wedding vows are:

I...(MB's fiance), take you, MB,
    to be my wife,
         to have and to hold
         from this day forward,
         for better for worse,
         for richer for poorer,
         in sickness and in health,
         to love and to cherish,
         until death do us part (or, "for as long as we both shall live").

I hope this helps!

Warm regards,

 

Rev. Tomkin Coleman

Minneapolis Wedding Coordinating and Officiating