Today is my and my husband’s 12th wedding anniversary, the first of two we celebrate – one civil, the other church.

This special time always makes me think of wedding vows from romance books. One of my favorites is the Gaelic Wedding Vow.  This has been used in many romance books, especially those set in the Scottish Highlands, most famously Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. One of my favorite new authors of Historical Romance, Kerrigan Byrne, also used it in the first book of her Victorian Rebels series – The Highwayman.

“She looked up at him with those eyes, and Dougan experienced a pang of love so intense and ferocious it felt as though it didn’t belong in this holy room.
He began the incantation he remembered from watching once from behind his mother’s skirts when he was young.

‘Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.
I give ye my body, that we two might be one.
I give ye my spirit, ’til our life shall be done.’

Farah needed a bit of prompting to remember all the words, but she said them with such fervency that Dougan was touched. Slipping a ring of a willow herb vine onto her finger, he recited the sacred olde vows with perfect clarity, but translated them into English for her sake.

‘I made ye my heart
At the rising of the moon.
To love and honor,
Through all our lives.
May we be reborn,
May our souls meet and know.
And love again.
And remember.’

She looked lost and mystified for a moment, then announced, “Me, too.”

I’ll be writing a wedding scene for Book 2 of my Carpe Diem Chronicles series and this certainly has given me inspiration.