Yahoo News Wedding readings: the best poems, song lyrics and Bible passages
As wedding season gets underway, thousands of couples across Britain are preparing to tie the knot. But what wedding readings to choose in your service?
Secular readings have become increasingly popular in recent years. When it comes to planning your own wedding, there’s no reason not to look further afield than the Bible and Shakespeare.
Here’s our selection of the very best - both all-time greats, and more unconventional choices - all of which would be perfect for a wedding. And, crucially, they all clock in at well under five minutes.
Poems
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Most of the poems on this list are sonnets. Shakespeare casts a long shadow, but part of the reason why this particular poem has lasted is that it lends itself so easily to new contexts and interpretations. Written as part of a sequence addressed to a (male) “fair youth”, it would be a particularly apt choice for a same-sex marriage.
“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”
The Present by Michael Donaghy
Perfect for scientists, stargazers and poetry buffs. Donaghy, who died in 2004, was the modern age’s answer to John Donne; a metaphysical poet who wins over the heart by first wooing the mind. This lovely sonnet about space and time begins with the image of the moon reflected in a pool, “perceived by astrophysicist and lover”, before reminding us how far its light has travelled. Thanks to some time-travelling sleight-of-hand, the “present” moment becomes a gift in the final couplet, quoted below.
“Make me this present then: your hand in mine, and we'll live out our lives in it.”
'The Master-Speed' by Robert Frost
Written by the poet for his own daughter’s wedding, in this poem Frost (like Donaghy, above) plays with the idea that love can triumph over the passage of time.
“Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar”
'A Vow' by Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope isn’t keen on the traditional wedding vows. “I don’t think a bride should ever promise to 'obey’ her husband,” she said in 2011. Luckily, she’s written a vow of her own - and it’s as direct, heartfelt and gently amusing as Cope’s many fans have come to expect from her work. There’s no pledge to “obey”; instead, this poem ends, “I promise I will do my very best.” What more can anyone do?
"And yet I’m still the one you want to be with And you’re the one for me – of that I’m sure. You are my closest friend, my favourite person,
The lover and the home I've waited for."
Bridled Vows by Ian Duhig
Even more so than Cope’s poem, this is a playful exercise in lowering your husband’s expectations. more expectation-lowering set of promises than even Wendy Cope’s. This wry poem in the voice of a new bride was a highlight of Duhig’s latest book, the TS Eliot Prize-nominated The Blind Roadmaker.
“I'll do my best to be your better half,
but I don't have the patience of a saint
and at you, not with you, I'll sometimes laugh,
and snap too, though I'll try to learn restraint.”
The Ent and the Ent-Wife by JRR Tolkien
If you and your partner bonded over a shared love of Lord of the Rings - and it’s been known to happen - why not celebrate your nuptials by teaming up to recite this mellifluous duet about two ents in love. (Note for non-Tolkienites: ents are those gnarly walking tree things).
When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain
I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again!
Together we will take the road that leads into the west
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.
Bible
1 John 4:7-12
Win your vicar’s approval with this beautiful passage from the first epistle of John, which presents our love for our fellow mortals as an extension of our love for the Almighty.
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." (King James Bible)
Song of Solomon, 8:6-7
These passionate, lyrical verses about the power of love – drawn from the raunchiest book of the Bible – would make for a refreshingly unconventional choice.
“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” (King James Bible)
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The uncontested classic of wedding readings – but be careful which version of the Bible you use; the Greek word “agape” has been variously translated as either “love” or “charity”.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (New International Version)
Literature
From Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
If you’re the father of the groom, and are looking for a reading that celebrates enduring, life-long love, then look no further than these wise words from Dr Iannis - the father of Captain Corelli’s lover Pelagia - from de Bernières’s celebrated 1994 novel.
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become 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 of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Ooh la la! Add a little 19th century high romance to your wedding. These lines from a letter to tender-hearted Cosette by the dashing young student Marius have taken on a life beyond Hugo’s novel as a mainstay of modern marriage services.
“The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite. Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.”
Children's literature
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
If this 1922 children’s book turns your heart to mush, you’re in good company. Prince Harry and Prince William read out the following lines together at Zara Phillips’s wedding to Mike Tindall, and this passage from the book also featured in Drew Barrymore’s wedding service when she married Will Kopelman in 2012.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real," said the Rabbit.
The Skin Horse smiled. "The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago, but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
Edward Lear’s 1871 nonsense poem was written to amuse a friend’s three-year-old daughter. Charming and whimsical, it’s the perfect choice if you’re looking for something light-hearted for a very young guest to read.
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
McBratney’s much-loved bedtime story has sold more than 28 million copies since it was first published in 1994. As the book is only around 400 words long, you can easily read the whole thing, cover to cover.
Little Nutbrown Hare, who was going to bed, held on tight to Big Nutbrown Hare's very long ears. He wanted to be sure that Big Nutbrown Hare was listening.
"Guess how much I love you," he said.
"Oh, I don't think I could guess that," said Big Nutbrown Hare.
"This much," said Little Nutbrown Hare, stretching out his arms as wide as they could go.
Big Nutbrown Hare had even longer arms. "But I love YOU this much," he said.
Hmm, that is a lot, thought Little Nutbrown Hare.
"I love you as high as I can reach." said Little Nutbrown Hare.
"I love you as high as I can reach," said Big Nutbrown Hare.
That is quite high, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. I wish I had arms like that.
Songs
Into my Arms (lyrics by Nick Cave)
“I don’t believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do.”
If that opening couplet applies to your own relationship, you won’t find a better choice than Nick Cave’s 1997 ballad.
It respectfully acknowledges that partners can have different beliefs, while drawing on religious imagery to convey a sense of wonderment.
“I don’t believe in the existence of angels
(But looking at you, I wonder if that’s true)
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you,
To each burn a candle for you,
To make bright and clear your path,
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms.”
I Get a Kick Out of You (lyrics by Cole Porter)
For a teetotaller with a sense of humour, this is the ticket. First sung by Ethel Merman for Anything Goes (1934), and later famously covered by Frank Sinatra, it’ll make your guests titter while also reminding them you’re happily drunk on luurve.
“I get no kick from champagne,
Mere alcohol
Doesn't thrill me at all, So tell me, why should it be true,
That I get a kick out of you?”
Dance Me to the End of Love (lyrics by Leonard Cohen)
Leonard Cohen was an award-winning poet before he ever picked up a guitar, and you can tell. His song lyrics stand up as great writing in their own right, none more so than this passionate 1984 love song.
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
