Here are a few quotes, poems, and literary passages that I have found from my work officiating hundreds of weddings over the years! If you are looking to give your wedding a timeless quality—romantic, enduring, thoughtful, finding that perfect passage is a lovely way to do that. In an age where everything lives on the internet, I can’t promise that these aren’t out there, but here are few that are a bit off the beaten path.
Love is the Only Thing We Take With Us
On the mysterious and inexplicable connection many couples feel, a poem by Lang Leav from her book Memories:
If you came to me with a face I have not seen,
with a voice I have never heard,
I would still know you.
Even if centuries separated us,
I would still feel you.
Somewhere between the sand and the stardust,
through every collapse and creation,
there is a pulse that echoes of you and I.
When we leave this world,
we give up all our possessions and our memories.
Love is the only thing we take with us.
It is all we carry from one life to the next.
The Natural Order of Things
When you meet the person you want to spend your life with, it can feel so absolutely right. A poem by Nikki Giovanni:
I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north . . .
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off this Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things
Each Piece Was Needed
A lovely selection chosen by one of my couples who met 20 years ago, drifted apart, and then re-connected in a serious way. It’s a poem that recognizes that sometimes we go through a difficult time before we find our way home. I find so many of my favorite readings from my couples! “Foundations Stones” by Danna Faulds:
Here is my past–
what I’ve been proud of,
and what I’ve pushed away.
Today I see how each piece
was needed, not a single
step wasted on the way.
Like a stone wall,
every rock resting
on what came before-
no stone can be
suspended in mid-air.
Foundation laid by every
act and omission,
each decision, even
those the mind would
label “big mistake”.
These things I thought
were sins, these are as
necessary as successes,
each one resting on the
surface of the last, stone
upon stone, the fit
particular, complete,
the rough, uneven
face of these rocks
makes surprising,
satisfying patterns
in the sunlight.
This, and My Heart
This sweet, simple poem by Emily Dickinson reflects something of the impossibility of measuring love and makes a lovely reading for a transition or introduction.
It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
Love is a Promise
Erich Fromm has several lovely passages on love that work well as a wedding reading. In this passage from The Art of Loving he writes of a love that is more than feeling, it is a decision, a commitment:
Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
There is No Such Thing As Love
Here Erich Fromm writes of a love that is based in action, for love cannot only be a feeling. Remember to look for readings that reflect your personal ideas about love and marriage.
Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing. . .
To say ‘I have a great love for you’ is meaningless. Love is not a thing that one can have, but a process, an inner activity that one is the subject of, I can love, I can be in Love, but in love I have…. nothing. In fact, the less I have, the more I can love.
Highest Ideals of Love
Looking for a way to express your support for marriage equality? Consider including Justice Anthony Kennedy’s beautiful words from the landmark Supreme Court decision Obergefell vs. Hodges as a reading in your ceremony:
No union is more profound than marriage for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.
Love and Mutual Support
But before this ruling, Judge Margaret Marshall from the State Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts wrote another beautiful passage that works well in a wedding ceremony:
Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations . . . Without question, civil marriage enhances the “welfare of the community.” It is a “social institution of the highest importance.”
Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family…. Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.
To This Day, I Don’t Know Exactly What She Loves about Me
Charles Baxter, in Feast of Love, writes of a love that is marked by ease. I often find when I ask couples what makes them work, they something along the lines of “it was just easy from the very beginning.” If that fits you, consider this reading:
Here’s a profundity, the best I can do: sometimes you just know . . . You just know when two people belong together. I had never really experienced that odd happenstance before, but this time, with her, I did. Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn’t have to strive for anything. A quality of ease spread over us. Whatever I was, well, that was apparently what she wanted . . . To this day I don’t know exactly what she loves about me and that’s because I don’t have to know. She just does. It was the entire menu of myself. She ordered all of it.
Your Life Will Not Go Unnoticed
This passage shows how central our partner is in terms of making meaning in our lives. It’s from Shall We Dance, 2004:
Why is it that people get married?
Because we need a witness to our lives.
There’s a billion people on the planet.
What does any one life really mean?
But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything…
The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things,
All of it… all the time, every day.
You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.
Your life will not go unwitnessed – because I will be your witness.’
In Life We Share a Single Quilt
Marriage is a mysterious joining of two lives into one life. Each retains their individuality, and yet, they are also more than the sum of their parts. “Married Love” by Kuan Tao-Sheng, translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung:
You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one bed.
From the I Ching
This passage contemplates the strength of love.
When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze. And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids.
From the Bhagavad Gita
Although not specifically about marriage, this passage is a reminder to live each day fully—it’s a reminder to truly be in the moment.
Look to this day, For it is life, The very life of life. In its brief course lie all the varieties And realities of your existence; The bliss of growths The glory of action, The splendor of beauty; For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision, But today well lived makes Every yesterday a dream of happiness And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day. Such is the salvation of the dawn.
From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
One of my favorites as it explores the mystery of togetherness and separateness.
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of heavens dance between you.
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.
