Aiming at a systematic inclusion of pseudoscalar and vector mesons as active degrees of freedom in an effective Lagrangian, studies have been performed in this thesis concerning the foundations of such an effective Lagrangian as well as tree-level and beyond-tree-level calculations. Hereby, vector mesons are described by antisymmetric tensor fields. First, an existing power counting scheme for both pseudoscalar and vector mesons is extended to include the pseudoscalar-meson singlet in a systematic way. Based on this, tree-level calculations are carried out which are in good agreement with the available experimental data and several processes are predicted. In particular, the ω-π0 transition form factor is in better agreement with experimental data than the prediction done in the vector-meson-dominance model. Furthermore, a Lagrangian with vector mesons is used together with the leading contributions of chiral perturbation theory in order to calculate tree-level reactions in the sector of odd intrinsic parity. It turns out that both the Lagrangian with vector mesons and the Lagrangian of chiral perturbation theory are needed to describe experimental data. Additionally, a feasibility check for one-loop calculations with pseudoscalar and vector mesons in the loop is performed. Thereby, only a limited number of interaction terms in the Lagrangian with vector mesons is used. The results are used to both renormalise the low-energy constants of chiral perturbation theory up to chiral order Q4 and to determine the influence of loops with vector mesons on masses and decay constants of pseudoscalar mesons.