Not looking for anything complicated for your wedding readings? Something simple, beautiful, romantic… and to the point? This is a list of blessings, poems, and excerpts that you’ll find handy!
Decide which ones resonate most for you and the sentiments that you’d like to share. Have fun reading and choosing the perfect readings for your wedding day 🙂
This Day
from the Sanskrit
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 growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is already 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 salutation of the dawn.
Celtic Blessing
May the God of peace guard
The door of your house,
The door of your heart.
May the road rise to meet you,
And the sun stand at your shoulder.
May the wind be always at your back,
And the rains fall softly upon your fields.
May life itself befriend you
Each day, each night,
Each step of your journey.
May the peace of the spirit be with you
And with your children,
From the day that we have here today
Until the the day of the end of your lives.
Love’s Exchange
by Sir Philip Sidney
My true love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
Commitment
by Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season
Ultimately there comes a time when a decision must be made.
Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take.
It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation.
It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling.
Wedding Blessing
Anonymous
May the sun bring you new strength by day;
May the moon softly restore you by night.
May the rain wash away your fears
And the breeze invigorate your being.
May you, all the days of your life,
Walk gently through the world
And know its beauty.
Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will shelter the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will warm the other.
Now you will feel no solitude, for each will bring company to the other.
Now you are two persons, but both will lead one life.
Now go to your dwelling to begin the days of your life together,
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.
Commitment
Ruth’s commitment to Naomi, Chapter 1, verses 16-17
Wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you stay, I will stay;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I will also die,
And there I will be buried with you.
May nothing but death part us
By God’s help.
Thoughts on Marriage
by Erasmus
What could be more sweet than to live with one to whom you are united in body and mind, who talks with you in secret affection, and to whom you have committed all your faith and your fortune?
What in all nature is lovelier? You are bound to friends in affection. How much more are you bound to a husband or wife in the highest love, with union of the body, the bond of mutual vows and the sharing of your property!
Nothing is more safe, tranquil, pleasant and loving than marriage.
It is not enough to love passionately…
by Anatole France
My children, it is not enough to love passionately; you must also love well.
A passionate love is good doubtless, but a beautiful love is better.
May you have as much strength as gentleness; may it lack nothing, not even forbearance, and let even a little compassion be mingled with it.
You are young, fair and good; but you are human, and because of this capable of much suffering. If then something of compassion does not enter into the feelings you have one for the other, these feelings will not always befit all the circumstances of your life together; they will be like festive robes that will not shield you from wind and rain.
We love truly only those we love even in their weakness and their poverty. To forbear, to forgive, to console, that alone is the science of love.
The Confirmation
by Edwin Muir
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that’s honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea,
Not beautiful or rare in every part,
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.
Married Love
by Kuan Tao-Sheng
You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like 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 coffin.
