How to Read Wedding Vows Without Rushing (With Pacing Tips)

You spent weeks writing your vows. You agonized over every word. And then on the day, you blew through them in forty-five seconds while your hands shook and your voice cracked.

It happens to almost everyone. Adrenaline compresses time. Your brain tells you to hurry up because everyone is watching. The result is a blur that neither you nor your partner can remember clearly.

The fix is not “just relax.” The fix is deliberate pacing practice — and it takes less effort than you think.

Why you rush (and why it’s normal)

Three things conspire against you at the altar:

Adrenaline — your fight-or-flight system doesn’t know the difference between a predator and 150 people staring at you. Your speech rate increases 20–40% under acute stress.
No external pacing cue — when you read from a piece of paper, there’s no scroll speed, no metronome, nothing telling you to slow down. You set the pace, and your nervous system sets it too fast.
Emotional flooding — the sentences that matter most are the ones that make you choke up, and your instinct is to push through them quickly rather than sit in the discomfort.

Understanding these three forces is the first step. The second step is building a system that counteracts them.

The 3-breath technique

This is the single most effective pacing tool for spoken vows. It requires zero practice equipment.

Before you start: Take one full breath — in through the nose for 4 seconds, out through the mouth for 6 seconds. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system and physically slows your heart rate.

At every period or paragraph break: Pause. Take one breath. Then continue. Not a gasping breath — a calm, deliberate one.

At the emotional peak (the sentence that makes you tear up): Stop. Look at your partner. Breathe. Then say it slowly.

That’s it. Three breath points. Before, between, and at the peak.

How to practice pacing with a teleprompter

A teleprompter removes the biggest pacing problem: you can’t rush ahead of the scroll.

Here’s how to use the vows.you teleprompter for pacing practice:

Day 1–2: Read on Slow (100 WPM)

Start on the slowest setting even if it feels painfully slow. You’re training your muscle memory for a pace that is much slower than your natural anxious speed. Read out loud. If you finish a sentence before the highlight reaches the next word, you’re still going too fast.

Day 3–4: Move to Medium (130 WPM)

This is close to a natural conversational pace. Most wedding vows land best in this range. Notice which sentences make you want to speed up — those are the ones you need to practice pausing on.

Day 5: Record yourself

Use your phone to record a full read-through on Medium. Play it back. You’ll hear things you cannot hear in real time:

Sentences that blur together
Words you swallow
Moments where a pause would have made the line land harder

Day 6–7: Practice with the 3-breath technique

Turn off the teleprompter. Read from your printed vows (or your phone notes — whatever you’ll use on the day). Apply the three breaths. Time yourself. You should be within 10% of your Medium-speed teleprompter time.

Common pacing mistakes (and how to fix them)

Mistake 1: Starting too fast

The first sentence sets the tempo for everything that follows. If you rush the opening, you’ll rush the whole thing.

Fix: Memorize your first sentence. Say it before you look down at your text. Make eye contact with your partner as you deliver it.

Mistake 2: Skipping punctuation pauses

Commas exist for a reason. Periods are full stops. Ellipses are deliberate silences. When you’re nervous, you treat all punctuation as invisible.

Fix: The teleprompter’s word-by-word highlighting bakes punctuation pauses into the timing. Practice following the highlight, not racing ahead of it.

Mistake 3: Reading in a monotone

Rushing and monotone are cousins. When you speed up, you flatten your intonation because your brain doesn’t have time to add emphasis.

Fix: Pick three words or phrases in your vows that deserve emphasis. Practice saying them louder, slower, or with a different tone than the surrounding text. Mark them in your written copy.

Mistake 4: Not practicing out loud

Reading silently is not practice. Your mouth, your breathing, and your voice need repetitions — not just your eyes.

Fix: Every practice session should be out loud. Whisper-reading counts if you’re in public, but full-voice practice at home is best.

What pace should you target?

Speed	WPM	Best for
Slow	100	Long, emotional vows (300+ words). Gives you room to breathe and pause.
Medium	130	Standard length vows (150–250 words). Natural conversational pace.
Fast	160	Short, punchy vows (under 150 words). Still slower than most people’s nervous pace.

If your vows are 200 words and you read them at 130 WPM, you’ll finish in about 1 minute 32 seconds. That’s a comfortable length — long enough to be meaningful, short enough to hold the room.

The day-of checklist

Print your vows on heavy card stock (it doesn’t shake as much as paper)
Memorize your first and last sentences
Take one breath before you begin
Pause at every period
Look up at your partner at least three times
Don’t apologize if you cry — pause, breathe, continue

Practice now

The best time to start practicing is a week before your wedding. The second best time is right now.

Paste your vows into the free teleprompter and run through them once on Slow. It takes two minutes. You’ll immediately feel more prepared.