In sickness and in health: where the vow comes from and how to say it

The clause is a condition, not a feeling. It says that a change in your partner's body or mind does not release you from the marriage, and that the promise you are making today is indifferent to which of you gets ill first.

That is a much harder thing than it sounds when you are twenty-eight and healthy. In practice the clause is cashed in over decades: a diagnosis, a long recovery, a mental health crisis, a parent's dementia that reshapes your household, a chronic condition that quietly rewrites what your weekends look like.

It is also mutual and unlimited in the traditional wording. There is no clause about how long, how expensive, or how inconvenient. That absence is the whole point of the sentence.

The phrase belongs to the marriage service of the Book of Common Prayer. The first English prayer book was published in 1549, and its Form of Solemnization of Matrimony already contained the clause in almost exactly the wording used today, spelled in the fashion of the period.

The prayer book was revised several times, and the 1662 edition is the version that became standard and is still published by the Church of England. The 1662 marriage service is where most modern quotations of the traditional vows come from, directly or at several removes.

Because both texts are centuries old, they are reproduced in full by public archives and by the Church of England itself, and couples quote them freely in ceremonies and programmes. Modern service books are recent works and belong to the bodies that publish them, so ask your officiant before reprinting a current liturgy.

Quoted alone, in sickness and in health is a fragment. Read in place, it is the third of four paired conditions inside one continuous vow, and the pairing is what gives it its rhythm.

The 1662 wording for the man reads: I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.

The woman's vow in the same service is identical apart from the closing formula and one addition: to love, cherish, and to obey, and thereto I give thee my troth. The full text of both is quoted in the wordings section below.

Less than you would expect. The list of conditions is the same in both editions, and in sickness and in health appears in each of them in the same position.

The most quoted difference is the ending. The 1549 text reads till death us depart, using an older sense of the word depart meaning to separate. By 1662 the line had become till death us do part, which is how it has been said ever since and why the modern misquote till death do us part is so persistent.

The bride's promise to obey appears in both editions. Twentieth-century revisions in many denominations dropped it or made it optional, which is why most couples encountering the traditional wording today meet a version where both partners say to love and to cherish.

The clause survives modernization better than almost any other part of the old service, because it names a real circumstance instead of a social arrangement. Even couples who throw out every other traditional line tend to keep this one in some form.

If the archaic register does not suit your ceremony, these carry the same promise in ordinary language. Choose one, not three, or the vow starts to sound like a list of synonyms.

Ask couples what the clause means to them and almost nobody describes a hospital. They describe logistics: who takes the appointments, who explains the diagnosis to the children, who carries the household during a bad six months.

That is worth putting into the vow, because it is the version you will actually live. A promise to be the one who makes the phone calls is more useful, and more moving, than a promise to be there.

It is also worth saying that the clause runs both ways. Many people say it thinking about caring for their partner. Half of them will be the one who needs care, and being willing to be cared for is its own promise.

For couples who are already living with a diagnosis, the traditional clause can feel abstract or, worse, like a polite way of not naming what is happening. You have two honest options and both work.

Keep the traditional wording exactly as it is, precisely because it is not personal. Its formality lets you make the promise in public without turning your health into the subject of the ceremony.

Or name it directly, in your own words, and then stop. One clear sentence is enough: I know what I am promising, and I am promising it anyway. Guests do not need the medical history, and your partner should agree to every word of it beforehand.

Put it in the promise block, not the opening. The clause is a condition attached to a commitment, so it needs a commitment in front of it to attach to.

Say it once. Couples sometimes use the traditional wording and then paraphrase it two sentences later, which halves the force of both. Pick the version you want and let it stand alone.

If your ceremony has both required wording and personal vows, check whether the clause is already in the fixed text before you write it into yours. Hearing it twice in four minutes is the most common avoidable repetition in a ceremony.

The phrase is misquoted more than any other line in the service, usually harmlessly, occasionally in a way that changes the rhythm of the sentence you are trying to say.

The frequent ones: in sickness and health, dropping the second in. Till death do us part rather than till death us do part. For better or worse rather than for better for worse. And through sickness and in health, which mixes two versions.

None of these will invalidate anything. But if you are quoting the traditional wording deliberately, quote it accurately, because the pairs and the repeated in are what make the sentence speakable at ceremony pace.