This is it – the point of all this palaver. Making promises to each other in front of our friends and family.
The ceremony was not going to be a standard religious one. We had our own thoughts on what we wanted to say, and the officiant, Taylor, was going to be a big part of it too.
Taylor would come round and we would brainstorm and write lists. Cassie and Taylor used to write scripts together in high school, and of course I’ve had some experience with stage writing as well. There was a lot of “from the top”, and a also of “no let’s run it through to the end this time”.
I downloaded the free scriptwriting software Celtx, and I used that to write up our ideas. I treated all the little bits as “scenes”, which Celtx treats as “index cards”. This allowed me to outline things, rearrange the order and generate a PDF or other document whenever I wanted. Celtx allows you to arrange your script as if it were a screenplay, stage play, radio play and so on. I treated it as a stage play.
We went through several runthroughs until we got what we wanted, but I think it was worth it. Here’s the finished version, with gaps for detail to be filled in:
[scribd id=63709789 key=key-2ahiwmkc4jt6aswui5r mode=list]
…and here’s the cue cards Taylor drew up to use on the day:
[scribd id=63709706 key=key-2o3ulushpbo28489zrcy mode=list]
Verdict: If you are writing your own vows, it’s a good idea to work them out with all the people involved, and write them down so everyone has a copy. Using a scriptwriting package may be taking this a bit far, but we enjoyed working it through like this.