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My fiancee and I are drafting our wedding contract. There are many things it's important to get right in such a document, and grammar should hopefully be among the easier ones.

One portion of a sentence in the draft contract currently reads:

"we choose each other as partners for all life's journeys"

Is "as partners" (plural) grammatical? I see an argument for "as a partner" (because we're choosing only one partner), but for reasons I'm having trouble articulating, that formulation (with "partner" in the singular) sounds funny to me.

One way to resolve this would be: "We each choose the other as a partner..." That one very clearly sounds right only when "partner" is singular. But the overall phrasing seems clunky, so I'd prefer not to use that sort of formulation.

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I think 'we choose each other as partners' is fine. It means you each choose each other, as your partner.

Is this only for a written document? Or are you reading it out loud in the ceremony?

It is common in weddings for the bride and groom to each say something to each other (she agrees x and he agrees y. Or they both read out the same thing). Which makes sense - as the wedding is the witnessing of your moment of agreement.

If you do it that way: she says 'I choose you as my partner for all life's journeys' then he says 'I choose you as my partner for all life's journeys' then your grammatical problem goes away.

If you read out something together that is already agreed 'we agreed x y and z already' then it's not so dramatic as you each pledging to each other, 'now' actually at the wedding, in my view.

More important than the grammar, is what you are actually agreeing together. As long as you're both happy with that, you'll be fine!

The nice thing about weddings now is that you can design it your own way, so focus on what makes you happy and feels good, and don't worry too much about 'getting it right'!

There are some nice examples of vows here: https://www.theknot.com/content/favorite-wedding-vows-from-real-weddings

Good luck!

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  • Thank you for the helpful response! To answer your question, this phrase is part of a sentence in a written document (we are writing what's called a ketubah).
    – Actie
    Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 0:39
  • Glad if it helped! Oh how lovely! As long it's clear what it means, then. It sounds like a form of legal agreement. Usually those define what terms mean. So somewhere they say 'partner' - means ....xyz and define it. Then, whenever that term is used in the document, we already know exactly what we mean by that. I always thought this was a good format, in legal documents. 😊
    – Jelila
    Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 1:26

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