Would you let AI write wedding vows for your big day? One Kiwi bride is feeling sick about the fact that her husband used AI to write his. So… was he wrong to do it?
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
This story was first published on September 1 2024
Alex had the perfect wedding. It was her dream day, marrying her partner of seven years, surrounded by loved ones.
“Everything went so smoothly, except for like, one or two things, like the cars we ordered didn’t turn up so we had to uber – and my flowers that were supposed to be bright orange were more like a peach,” says Alex.
But other than a couple of little issues, Alex felt the whole day was absolutely perfect.
That is, until a few weeks ago, when she learned some information that has changed the way she views the day.
Alex found out that her husband, Josh, used AI to write his vows.
“AI wrote the whole thing,” she says. “Like, he didn’t just get a bit of help. It was the whole thing.”
Alex says her husband’s vows were one of her favourite things about the whole day. They’d decided to write their own and keep them a secret until the big day.
“His vows were so sweet and special and thoughtful,” says Alex. “He’d never said anything like that to me before and it made me feel so special and loved.”
But now, says Alex, “that feels like a lie. I feel duped.”
Alex discovered the truth when, two weeks after the wedding, they were catching up with a group of friends for dinner. After a few drinks, one of the friends said how amazing – and unexpected – Josh’s vows were.
‘He said, ‘Yeah, thanks ChatGPT’,” says Alex.
Alex felt flustered and didn’t say much, but the other friends asked for more details – some were laughing, some obviously didn’t think it was a big deal at all, and others, say Alex, “obviously were a bit shocked, like me”.
“Josh pretty much said that AI wrote the whole thing, he just put in some details and it did the rest,” she says. “That hurt, because the things he talked about – our OE, our dog, saving our house deposit, my long hair – I don’t know, they made it all feel special and like he’d thought so much about what he loved about me.”
Alex says her husband was a bit more embarrassed when she talked to him about it when they got home. “He said he’d needed some help and had exaggerated when talking to our friends about it, but he didn’t think I’d be so upset about it,” she says.
In the last few weeks, Alex says the tarnished vows are now all she can think about when she thinks about the wedding and she hopes she can get over it, but she’s not too sure. She says she’s confided in friends about how upset it has made her and they’ve had mixed reactions.
“Some of them agree that it feels like a betrayal, a lie – like he cheated on the wedding exam, if that makes sense?” she says.
But others have a different view. “Most of my friends don’t think it’s as big a deal as I’m making it to be – they just see it as him needing some help to express his emotions, because he obviously did think about it to have the key things he wanted to talk about.”
And here we find ourselves in a murky new world, where it’s up to us as individuals to navigate what we think is fair, kind, reasonable and truthful when it comes to getting the help of AI in our most precious moments.
Because Alex and Josh are far, far from the first couple to find themselves in this predicament. Many people are turning to AI to give them inspiration, or to help them out of a bout of writer’s block (not uncommon when there is so much pressure placed on vows!), or, to think up some jokes, or to write the entire thing.
And, not only is ChatGPT well used to helping couples craft their vows, but there are bespoke AI services for doing just that.
The popular US wedding planning site, Joy, has now created n AI tool built on ChatGPT to help users beat their writer’s block and craft their vows, or even for help writing toasts, wedding invites, thank you cards or to create a wedding hashtag to use on social media.
Joy’s CEO Vishal Joshi says he had reservations himself before launching the product. “Are we trying to make something which is so emotional and so personal – are we attempting to automate it? We had that struggle,” he says.
But ultimately, he says, people have always struggled with getting started on writing their vows and in the last year that the feature has been available it is most often used for vow writing and has proved to be very popular. “Getting those emotions onto paper is so much harder than any one of us acknowledges,” he says.
Nick, a wedding celebrant in NZ, says that writing your own vows can be one of the most stressful tasks of a wedding. “For a lot of people, it puts them far outside of their comfort zone,” he says. “They may not have ever had to write anything like this before, to write something so personal. Some people feel pressure that it’s supposed to make people cry or laugh or take them on a real journey. That can be paralyzing. Then, there’s the thought that you have to say them in front of a crowd!”
Nick says the use of AI is interesting, but perhaps not really that different to the way things have been done in the past anyway. “People often outsource part of the process of writing vows, whether they admit it or not,” he says. “I often have couples asking me for examples of how other weddings I’ve done have been structured and what people say. I often send them what has been said. And, of course, people borrow bits of what other people say and do. So many people google and read other people’s vows and take bits and pieces that fit them and their story and get inspiration. I wonder if this is really that different.”
What are your views? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Send us an email to hello@capsulenz.com or head to our social media platforms to comment!
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