Legally, what you have to say at a wedding comes down to two spoken moments: each person has to verbally agree to marry the other, and the officiant has to verbally announce that you are married. Every state requires both. No state dictates the exact words for either one, which is why ceremonies can look and sound wildly different and still produce a valid marriage.
What Each Person Has to Say
The legal name for the first required moment is the declaration of intent, sometimes called the declaration of consent. It is each person’s verbal confirmation that they freely choose to marry the other, and it is the moment that turns a celebration into a legal act. Without it, there is no valid marriage no matter how the rest of the ceremony looks.
In practice, this takes one of two shapes. The officiant asks a direct question — “Do you take this person to be your spouse?” — and each person answers “I do” or “I will.” Or the two people face each other and say it affirmatively: “I take you to be my husband,” “my wife,” “my spouse.” Either format works as long as each person clearly and voluntarily communicates consent. A nod, a thumbs-up, or silence will not do it. The law expects an unambiguous verbal yes.
The consent also has to be real. Both parties need the mental capacity to understand what marriage means, including the financial and legal obligations that come with it. Consent given under threats, under coercion, or while a party is too intoxicated to understand what they are agreeing to can be grounds for annulment. An officiant with reason to believe one party is being pressured or lacks capacity should not go forward.
What the Officiant Has to Say
After both people have declared their intent, the officiant has to verbally announce that the couple is now legally married. This pronouncement is the finish line. Once it is spoken, the marriage is legally in effect, even before anyone signs paperwork.
The traditional phrasing is “By the authority vested in me, I now pronounce you married.” The exact words do not matter. “You are now married” works just as well. What does not work is leaving this step out. If the officiant forgets the pronouncement, or the ceremony drifts to a close without one, the legal completion of the marriage can be called into question.
Everything Else Is Up to You
Outside of those two moments, the law gives couples enormous room. No state requires specific vows. No state requires a ring exchange, a particular reading, or any set script. You can write your own vows, build in cultural or religious rituals, or strip the ceremony down to the bare minimum. The legal floor is genuinely low: declaration of intent, pronouncement, done.
Where couples sometimes get into trouble is writing a ceremony so personal that the two required legal elements get buried or quietly dropped. If you are drafting your own script, the simplest safeguard is to make sure your officiant knows to ask for your consent and then explicitly pronounce you married. Those two beats fit naturally into almost any format.
Who Has to Be Saying It
The words carry legal weight only when the officiant has legal authority to perform the ceremony. If the person running the wedding is not authorized under state law, the marriage itself can be challenged. That is a question of who is standing in front of you, not what they say.
There is one notable exception. A small number of states, including Colorado and the District of Columbia, allow self-solemnizing (or self-uniting) marriages, where the couple can legally marry each other with no officiant at all. The two people make their declarations of consent to one another, sign the marriage license, and file it themselves. Pennsylvania has a similar tradition rooted in its Quaker heritage. In the vast majority of states, though, trying to run a ceremony without an authorized officiant produces a marriage that can be declared invalid. Confirm your state allows it before going that route.
What Happens If Someone Flubs a Line
Couples sometimes worry that a stumbled word or an unconventional ceremony could void the marriage. In practice, courts strongly favor upholding marriages and are reluctant to void them over technical ceremony defects. Many states have statutes that specifically protect marriages performed by someone who appeared to have authority, even if that authority later turns out to be deficient, as long as at least one party acted in good faith.
The things that actually threaten a marriage’s validity are more serious than wording: no marriage license was obtained, one party lacked capacity or was coerced, the parties are too closely related, or one party was already married to someone else. An unusual pronouncement, a nervous “I do” that came out as “I will,” or a creative rewrite of the vows almost never gets near that line. If both people consented out loud, an authorized officiant pronounced you married, and the license was signed and filed, the marriage holds.