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Classic wedding readings
Some readings have survived a hundred weddings because they earn it. The language is doing more than describing love — it's shaping it, slowing it down, giving the couple something to stand inside.
These are the classic wedding readings we come back to. If you want your ceremony to feel rooted, formal in the good way, and quietly confident, start here.
Classic readings that never date
- 01
How do I love thee
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806 ~ 1861if God choose I shall but love thee better after death
Read the full poem → - 02
How long we were fool'd
by Walt Whitman, 1819 ~ 1892We have voided all but our own freedom, all but our own joy
Read the full poem → - 03
Love
by "Roy Croft" (disputed attribution)You are helping me to make out of the lumber of my life, not a tavern, but a temple
Read the full poem → - 04
Love Song
by Henry Dumas, 1934 ~ 1968On hands and knees the ocean begs up the beach, then falls at your feet.
Read the full poem → - 05
Love, mere love
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806 ~ 1861Let temple burn, or flax and an equal light leaps in the flames from cedar plank or weed. And love is fire.
Read the full poem → - 06
Marriage Morning
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809 ~ 1892This is the golden morning of love, and you are his morning star
Read the full poem → - 07
Most like an arch
by John Ciardi, 1916 ~ 1978All I do at piling stone on stone apart from you is roofless around nothing
Read the full poem → - 08
Now
by Robert Browning, 1812 ~ 1889When ecstasies uptmost we clutch at the core
Read the full poem → - 09
On Love
by Kahlil Gibran, 1883 ~ 1931Let love be a moving sea between the shores of your souls
Read the full poem → - 10
On marriage
by Kahlil Gibran, 1883 ~ 1931Be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night
Read the full poem → - 11
Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman, 1819 ~ 1892I give you myself before preaching or law
Read the full poem → - 12
Song of Wandering Aengus
by W.B. Yeats, 1865 ~ 1939We will pluck til times and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun
Read the full poem → - 13
Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare, 1564 ~ 1616If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved
Read the full poem → - 14
The Wedding March
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844 ~ 1889I to him turn with tears, whose wonder-wedlock deals triumph and immortal years
Read the full poem → - 15
Touched by an angel
by Maya Angelou, 1928 ~ 2014Love costs all we are and will ever be, but it is only love that will set us free.
Read the full poem → - 16
We are young
by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892 ~ 1973We have become as one, deep rooted in the soil of Life and tangled in the sweet growth
Read the full poem → - 17
Wedding Toast
by Richard Wilbur, 1921 ~ 2017The world's fullness is not made, but found.
Read the full poem →
Choosing your reading
How many readings should we have?
One or two is typical for a shorter ceremony; three works well if you'd like to give more guests a role. Vary the tone so the ceremony doesn't sit on one note.
Who should read?
Choose people whose voices you love hearing — siblings, close friends, a parent, a chosen family member. Send the reading in advance so they can practise.