Influencer Sydney Berry has a lengthy list of things she didn’t want to hear from her husband, Brendan Berry, when they exchanged wedding vows.
“I created a ‘do not use’ phrases list to give to my fiancé,” Sydney, 29, said in a viral TikTok video posted earlier this month. “These are phrases I absolutely do not want to hear when I’m standing up at the altar, and if I do hear them, I might say, ‘No.’”
At the top of Sydney’s list was the phrase, “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs.”
“When I see couples say this … I automatically think someone cheated,” the content creator explained, adding that she thinks the phrase signals that “you’ve gone through some rough patches where you probably should have broken up.”
“I just think that phrase is toxic, and I don’t want that impression to be left on anybody who is witnessing our vows,” Sydney explained.
Sydney also didn’t want to hear, “You are my rock,” because the phrase felt “unoriginal” and “fake.” Along the same lines, she banned “you are my human” and “you are my person.”
“It makes me cringe every time I hear it,” she quipped.
Sydney also banned “you are my forever” and “a life full of laughter” because she finds them “corny.”
“There’s literally a song about that. I don’t want you to say something that’s in a Daughtry song,” she said, referring to the band’s 2009 hit “Life After You.”
Finally, Sydney put a hard no on “you are my partner in crime.”
“All of these phrases just sound like they would be on wedding coasters you could buy off Amazon,” Sydney continued. “Everything needs to come from the heart, and it can’t just be these random corny phrases that have been regurgitated in thousands of wedding speeches. … I’m just asking for some originality, that’s all.”
Sydney said she made the video “as a joke,” but she wanted to share her thoughts because she figured that they would “resonate with a lot of other girls.”
The video received mixed reactions from viewers, with some adding their own banned phrases while others criticized Sydney.
“Micromanaging your future husband’s vows is kinda crazy,” one user commented.
“As a videographer who hears these vows 100000x times every other weekend I cannot agree more,” another person added.
Sydney tied the knot with Brendan on Saturday, March 14.
“That ‘just about to walk down the aisle’ feeling,” Sydney wrote over a video of herself in her wedding gown. In the caption, she added, “Indescribable feeling.”
