· Wedding Planning · 4 min read
I don't ask you to say I do, usually
Cuties call the ceremony the "I dos" bit of the day, which is cute, but it's actually not required and in many of my ceremonies I don't do it.
Couples call it “the I dos” — as in, “we’ve got the I dos at three, then the reception kicks off at six.” It’s a lovely shorthand. It’s also completely disconnected from what actually happens legally when two people get married.
“I do” isn’t in the Marriage Act. It’s not required. In a lot of ceremonies I write, it doesn’t appear at all.
This is the kind of thing that gets celebrants offside with me, and I understand why — there’s a version of this industry that’s deeply attached to tradition for tradition’s sake, and questioning beloved wedding furniture like “I do” reads as provocative. But I’m not a traditionalist. I want to help people celebrate marriage in a way that’s real and meaningful, and that means being honest about what’s actually happening when you get married versus what everyone thinks is happening.
”I do” is just saying the same thing twice
There’s a running joke in a certain corner of wedding culture — a Facebook page raised it a while back — about flipping the traditional pronouncement to “I now pronounce you woman and husband” as a small act of linguistic rebellion. The intent is good. The target is real. But here’s what that kind of discussion misses: “I now pronounce you” doesn’t mean anything either. Neither does the order of the words. The celebrant announcing that you’re married isn’t what makes you married.
What makes you married in Australia is your vows.
Specifically, it’s these three things happening in order:
Your celebrant/I say the monitum — words to this effect:
I am duly authorised by law to solemnise marriages according to law. Before you are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are now about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of two people to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
Then you each say, to one another:
I call upon the persons here present to witness that I, [full name], take thee, [full name], to be my lawful wedded wife/husband/spouse.
That’s it. That’s the law. Those are your vows. And read them carefully — because buried in those words is the consent. You are taking this person. You are calling upon witnesses to see it happen. The consent is already there, in language you’re required to say.
So when a celebrant then turns to you and asks “do you take this person?” — you’ve just said you do. You literally just said it. And when you answer “I do” — you’re saying it again.
It’s not wrong. It’s not harmful. But it’s redundant, and it’s not magic, and it’s not law.
Where “I do” actually comes from
“I do” is a movie line. Or more accurately, it’s a cultural inheritance from a time and place and religion that may have nothing to do with you, laundered through decades of film and television until it feels like the only possible answer to the only possible question.
It’s the same story as the white dress, the bouquet toss, the something borrowed — rituals that got attached to weddings at particular moments in history for particular reasons, and then got handed down so many times that people stopped asking where they came from. They just feel like weddings.
Which is fine, if you’ve actually chosen it. If you love the moment when the celebrant asks and you get to say “I do” and feel the weight of it — do it. It’s yours. But do it because you want it, not because you assumed it was compulsory.
What’s actually compulsory is much more interesting
When you strip out everything that isn’t legally required from a wedding ceremony, you’re left with something surprisingly small and surprisingly powerful: a monitum, and two people making a declaration to one another in front of witnesses.
No “I do.” No pronouncement. No kiss. No rings. No dress. No particular order of events. No chair covers.
All of that is optional. All of it is available. All of it can be chosen deliberately or left aside.
And once couples really understand that — once it lands that none of this is compulsory — they get to ask themselves a better question than “what does a wedding look like?”
They get to ask: how do people like us celebrate a marriage?
That question, taken seriously, produces ceremonies that are genuinely different from each other. Ceremonies that sound like the people getting married rather than like every wedding that person has ever attended. Ceremonies where the words mean something because they were chosen, not inherited.
Your marriage isn’t a hand-me-down. The ceremony that begins it shouldn’t be either.
