Finding Wedding Readings for a Wedding Ceremony can be a daunting task. A Wedding Reading can be religious or non-religious and as a marriage celebrant, I have had the privelidge to experience some great readings and sub-rituals included in a marriage ceremony.
Amidst the exchange of vows, the exchange of rings, and the celebration of unity, there exists a unique and heartfelt opportunity to include a friend or family member to perform a wedding reading or poem.
This is a personal choice for the couple, but it is a great option if you have a piece that really speaks to your relationship, or have a family member that really wants to be involved in the ceremony.
Infusing the Ceremony with Deeper Meaning: Wedding Readings
Looking for readings to include in a wedding ceremony? Including readings in your ceremony can be a wonderful way to add a special touch and enhance the overall experience. Readings can help convey emotions, provide insights, and symbolize the values and aspirations of the couple. Whether you want to express love, unity, friendship, or spirituality, there are various readings available that can perfectly complement your wedding ceremony.
Here are some Wedding Reading examples both religious and non-religious:
Non-Religious Wedding Readings
Love Is Friendship Set On Fire Written by: Laura Hendricks
Love is friendship caught fire it is quiet, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving.
It is loyalty through good and bad times.
It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
Love is content with the present, hopes for the future, and does not brood over the past.
It is the day-in and day-out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals.
If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things you lack.
If you do not have it, no matter what else there is, it is not enough.
Quotes by Dr Suess and The Magic of Love Writer: Helen Steiner Rice
We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird,
And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours,
We join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
Love is like magic, and it always will be,
For love still remains life’s sweet mystery.
Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange,
And there’s nothing in life that love cannot change!
Love can transform the most commonplace
Into beauty and splendour and sweetness and grace.
Love is unselfish, understanding and kind,
For it sees with its heart, and not with its mind.
Love is the answer that everyone seeks
Love is the language that every heart speaks.
Love can’t be bought, it is priceless and free.
Love, like pure magic, is life’s sweet mystery!
Wedding Readings Example: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Writer: Louis de Bernieres
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides, you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your root was so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.
That is just being in love, which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
The Art of Marriage Writer: Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens.
A good marriage must be created. In marriage the little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is at no time taking the other for granted the courtship should not end with the honeymoon, it should continue through the years.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world. It is forming a circle of love that gathers the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is not looking for perfection in each other.
It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humour.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow old.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.
It is not only marrying the right partner it is being the right partner.
About Love Writer: Dolly Alderton
I know that love can be loud and jubilant…It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them.
It’s laughing until you wheeze.
It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.
It’s skinny-dipping at dawn. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.
It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.
I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.
It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.
It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine.
It’s saying ‘You’re safer here than in a car’ as they hyperventilate on an EasyJet flight to Dublin.
It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’.
I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.
Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.
To Love Is Not To Possess Writer: James Kavanagh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
Scaffolding Writer: Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Dance by Paul Hayward
Open your heart to happiness.
Let every pore absorb light.
Swim in the joy of the here and now.
And cast off the darkness of night.
Walk in the summer of sunshine.
Fly in the blueness of sky.
Know possibilities are boundless.
Understand that nothing can die.
Step from the shadows of torment.
Sing ’til your throat gets too sore.
Smile for as long as the day is,
And laugh just a little bit more.
Breathe slowly and deeply and listen.
Give all your ideas a chance.
Let the sun beat down on your goodness,
And kick off your shoes and dance.
Wedding Readings: In my Life Writer: The Beatles
There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more
Maybe Writer: Anon
Maybe we are supposed to meet the wrong people before we meet the right one so when they finally arrive we are truly grateful for the gift we have been given.
Maybe it’s true love that we don’t know what we have lost until we lose it but it is also true that we don’t know what we’re missing until it arrives.
Maybe the happiest of people don’t have the best of everything, but make the best of everything that comes their way.
Maybe the best kind of love is the kind where you sit on the sofa together, not saying a word, and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.
Maybe once in a lifetime you find someone who not only touches your heart but also you soul, someone who loves you for who you are and not what you could be.
Maybe the art of true love is not about finding the perfect person, but about seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
I Wanna Be Yours Writer: John Cooper Clarke
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your raincoat
For those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
When you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
Take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
You’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
Hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
That’s how deep is my devotion
Love is an Adventure Writer: Pierre Tielhart de Chardin
Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops like the universe itself only by perpetual discovery. The only right love is that between couples whose passion leads them both, one through the other, to a higher possession of their being. Put your faith in the spirit which dwells between the two of you. You have each offered yourself to the other as a boundless field of understanding, of enrichment, of mutually increased sensibility. You will meet above all by entering into and constantly sharing one another’s thoughts, affections, and dreams. There alone, as you know, in spirit, which is arrived through flesh, you will find no disappointments, no limits. There alone the skies are ever open for your love there alone lies the great road ahead.
Extract from The Alchemist Writer: Paolo Coelho
When he looked into her eyes, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke — the language that everyone on Earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert.
What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. Because when you know the language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning
We’re a team Writer: Unknown
We’re a team. Whatever you lack, I got you.
We will balance each other out. Minor setback?
Guess we’ll make a major comeback. Bad day?
Well I promise you a better night. You need support?
I’ll be your backbone. I’ll keep you motivated and at the top always.
As long as you appreciate me and remain consistent you don’t ever have to doubt my loyalty.
You got me. I got us.
Love One Another Writer: Kahlil Gibran
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Love's not Time's fool Writer: Shakespeare
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
All I Know About Love Writer: Neil Gaiman
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I’ve learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It’s not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it’s what they mean.
Somebody’s got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn’t want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It’s not two broken halves becoming one.
It’s the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else’s love, nobody else’s marriage, is like yours,
and it’s a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that’s all I know about love.
On Your Wedding Day Writer: Unknown
Today is a day you will always remember
The greatest in anyone’s life
You’ll start off the day just two people in love
And end it as Husband and Wife
It’s a brand new beginning the start of a journey
With moments to cherish and treasure
And although there’ll be times when you both disagree
These will surely be outweighed by pleasure
You’ll have heard many words of advice in the past
When the secrets of marriage were spoken
But you know that the answers lie hidden inside
Where the bond of true love lies unbroken
So live happy forever as lovers and friends
It’s the dawn of a new life for you
As you stand there together with love in your eyes
From the moment you whisper ‘I do’
And with luck, all your hopes, and your dreams can be real
May success find its way to your hearts
Tomorrow can bring you the greatest of joys
But today is the day it all starts
Symposium Writer: Plato
Humans have never understood the power of Love, for if they had they would surely have built noble temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done, since Love is our best friend, our helper, and the healer of the ills which prevent us from being happy.
To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. There were three sexes then: one comprised of two men called the children of the Sun, one made of two women called the children of the Earth, and a third made of a man and a woman, called the children of the Moon. Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them.
It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half. After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind.
Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. Those whose original nature lies with the children of the Sun are men who are drawn to other men, those from the children of the Earth are women who love other women, and those from the children of the Moon are men and women drawn to one another. And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment.
We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two this is the very expression of our ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.
A Blessing for Abbey and Andrew Writer: Elisa Reading
A marriage is a promise that two hearts gladly make,
A promise to be tender, to help, give and take.
Of kindness, thoughtfulness and understanding.
To listen well, to accept and to give loving care.
Australia’s first and only Saint came from Scotland.
Saint Mary MacKillops Chapel is opposite Abbey and Andrew’s home.
May she guide and watch over you both and may you always count your blessings.
Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog Writer: Taylor Mali
First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like sydney.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.
Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad.
Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block
and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions
at once, or wind itself around and around you
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.
But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.
Love Writer: William Parrish
Love is passion, obsession, and someone you can’t live without.
If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with?
Fall head over heels.
I say find someone you can love like crazy and who’ll love you the same way back.
And how do you find them?
Forget your head and listen to your heart.
Because the truth is there is no sense living your life without this.
To make the journey and not fall deeply in love — well, you haven’t lived a life at all.
You have to try.
Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.
Here’s to Right Now Writer: Ms Moem
You’re surrounded by your loved ones
And all are wishing you well
As you create a brand new chapter
In the story that’s yours to tell
We talk about the memories
You have yet to make together
And the moments you’ve already shared
To be carried with you forever
But take the time to live today
As your marriage begins
Look around and soak it up
The moment we are in
For this is where the magic starts
When you both say your vows
You pledge to spend your lives as one
Because of the love you feel now
So yes here’s to a future that is bright and warm and clean
But more than that, here’s to right now and what it means to be here
I Carry Your Heart With Me Writer: E. E. Cummings
I carry your heart with me
I carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones Writer: Neil Gaiman
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life … You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you.
From Beginning to End Writer: Robert Fulghum
The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another,
“You know all those things we’ve promised and hoped and dreamed—well, I meant it all, every word.” Look at one another and remember this moment in time.
Before this moment you have been many things to one another—acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, and even teacher, for you have learned much from one another in these last few years.
Now you shall say a few words that take you across a threshold of life, and things will never quite be the same between you.
For after these vows, you shall say to the world, this—is my husband, this—is my wife
RELIGIOUS WEDDING READINGS FOR A WEDDING CEREMONY
1 Corinthians 13:1-8, 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient love is kind love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
5 It does not insist on its own way it is not irritable or resentful
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends…
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is Love.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its passion as enduring as the grave. Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can rivers drown it. If a man tried to buy love with all his wealth, his offer would be utterly scorned.
Love Poem
God gave each of us a special family that we can call our own.
A family that loves us for who we are so we would never feel alone.
They may not like everything we do or everything we say, but the beautiful thing about “family” is that they love us anyway.
Sometimes we feel rejected by people who do not care, but our hearts are warmed when remembering that our family is always there!
So hug them a little more often, for sometimes we hurt the ones we love and tell them how much you love them, for they were sent to you from above.
A Marriage Blessing
Heavenly Father,
May the marriage of x and x always bring glory to you, joy to one another, and blessings to their family for many generations to come. May love and laughter fill their hearts and home for all the days of their lives. May they face every challenge hand-in-hand and side-by-side knowing that with God’s grace, they can weather every storm and grow as one. May their love shine bright for all to see as a testament of Your love and blessing on them. We pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.
Conclusion: Wedding Readings
These readings capture the essence of love, commitment, and the journey that lies ahead for the couple. Feel free to choose the ones that resonate with you the most and reflect the unique bond you share. Remember, the readings you select should represent your personal beliefs and values, and should touch the hearts of both you and your guests.
Including meaningful readings in your wedding ceremony can create a heartfelt and memorable experience for everyone involved.
Marriage Celebrant
Gary is dedicated to ensuring that wedding officiants and wedding emcees like you excel in creating unforgettable wedding experiences! With a passion for celebrations, he is an enthusiastic, down-to-earth, and fun Wedding Celebrant and Professional Wedding MC, operating in Australia.
Count on Gary to provide expert guidance and a relaxed approach to help you deliver remarkable ceremonies and receptions. His goal is to empower you to curate the best possible wedding day for couples, where every detail is thoughtfully arranged, and the party atmosphere is electrifying!
