Wedding planning is a meticulous process, and it requires a lot of attention to detail. Major aspects, such as the venue and your attire, and seemingly minor aspects, such as centerpieces and wedding readings, deserve the same amount of thought and effort.
If you are looking for an alternative wedding reading to incorporate into your ceremony, some choices include W. B. Yeats’s “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” Pablo Neruda’s “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII,” and Maya Angelou’s “Touched by an Angel.”
Below are over 30 poems, quotes, and excerpts from various forms of media you can use as a reading for your ceremony. Afterward, steps to help you decide which reading to use are also provided.
Alternative Wedding Readings for a Memorable Ceremony
1. “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” – W. B. Yeats
“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
2. “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” – E. E. Cummings
“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere go you go,
my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fearno fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i wantno 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)”
3. Excerpt from “Still Life With Woodpecker” – Tom Robbins
“When two people meet and fall in love, there’s a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more.
One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it’s usually too late, we’ve used it up.
What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It’s hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”
4. “Us Two” – A. A. Milne
Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
“Where are you going today?” says Pooh:
“Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too.
Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he.
“Let’s go together,” says Pooh.
“What’s twice eleven?” I said to Pooh.
(“Twice what?” said Pooh to Me.)
“I think it ought to be twenty-two.”
“Just what I think myself,” said Pooh.
“It wasn’t an easy sum to do,
But that’s what it is,” said Pooh, said he.
“That’s what it is,” said Pooh.
“Let’s look for dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“Yes, let’s,” said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few-
“Yes, those are dragons all right,” said Pooh.
“As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That’s what they are,” said Pooh, said he.
“That’s what they are,” said Pooh.
“Let’s frighten the dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“That’s right,” said Pooh to Me.
“I’m not afraid,” I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted “Shoo!
Silly old dragons!”- and off they flew.
“I wasn’t afraid,” said Pooh, said he,
“I’m never afraid with you.”
So wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
“What would I do?” I said to Pooh,
“If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True,
It isn’t much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he. “That’s how it is,” says Pooh.
5. “Marino Marini’s Horses and Riders” – Gwendolyn MacEwen
“So we embrace our end in our beginning.
All we have to give each other is
Our breath, our darkness breathing
Life into the dying lungs of the night.
Enter my darkness, I give you
My darkness;
Together for one second we are light.
We proceed in beautiful devastating stages
Towards our end, as the horse and rider
Collapse together in the catastrophe of love.
I lie in the night of your breath.
There is only your breath, all else has gone.
The horse dissolves between the rider’s thighs,
The world dissolves before the rider’s eyes.
So now, in the animal darkness, come.”
6. Excerpt from “Corelli’s Mandolin” – Louis de Bernières
“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 blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
7. “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” – Pablo Neruda
“I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.”
8. “All I Know About Love” – 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.”
9. Excerpt from “The Little Prince” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated so that he would be sure to remember.”
10. Excerpt from “The Bridge Across Forever” – Richard Bach
“A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other.
No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”
11. Excerpt from “Every Day” – David Levithan
“This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.”
12. Excerpt from “The Charm Offensive” – Alison Cochrun
“I’m telling you this, Charlie, because you asked how you know you’re going to love someone forever, and the truth is, despite what we tell people on this show, forever is never a guarantee. I don’t know if I’m going to love Rey for the rest of my life, but I know right now, I can’t imagine a future where I don’t love them. And for me, that’s enough.”
13. Excerpt from “Red, White & Royal Blue” – Casey McQuiston
“I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can’t.”
14. “Fidelity” – D. H. Lawrence
“Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers
in summer, and love, but underneath is rock.
Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than foraminiferae,
older than plasm altogether is the soul underneath.
And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love
slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks
of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,
a man’s heart and a woman’s,
that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,
the sapphire of fidelity.
The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.”
15. Excerpt from “The Amber Spyglass” – Phillip Pullman
“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again… I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me.”
16. “This Morning” – Mary Oliver
“This morning the redbirds’ eggs
have hatched and already the chicks
are chirping for food. They don’t
know where it’s coming from, they
just keep shouting, “More! More!”
As to anything else, they haven’t
had a single thought. Their eyes
haven’t yet opened, they know nothing
about the sky that’s waiting. Or
the thousands, the millions of trees.
They don’t even know they have wings.
And just like that, like a simple
neighborhood event, a miracle is
taking place.”
17. Quote from “One Tree Hill”
“Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always. A promise. Like a reward for persisting through life so long alone. A belief in each other and the possibility of love. A decision to ignore, simply rise above the pain of the past. A covenant, which at once binds two souls and yet severs prior ties. A celebration of the chance taken and the challenge that lies ahead. For two will always be stronger than one, like a team braced against the tempest civil world. And love will always be the guiding force in our lives. For tonight is mere formality. Only an announcement to the world of feelings long held. Promises made long ago. In the sacred spaces of our hearts.”
18. Excerpt from “Les Misérables” – Victor Hugo
“Love partakes of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is a divine spark, like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable, it is the point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish.”
19. Excerpt from “The Notebook” – Nicholas Sparks
“So, it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day.”
20. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” – John Donne
“As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.”
21. Quote from “Beverly Hills, 90210”
“I look at you and I see my best friend. Your energy and passion inspire me in ways I never thought possible. Your inner beauty is so strong that I no longer fear being myself. I no longer fear at all. I never thought I’d find someone to love that would love me back unconditionally. And then I realize that although we were often apart, you were always with me and you were always my soul mate. You give me purpose when I feel I have none. Without you my soul would be empty, my heart would be broken, my being incomplete. I thank God every day you were brought into my life and I thank you for loving me.”
22. Excerpt from “The Alchemist” – Paulo Coelho
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
23. “Love” – Roy Croft
I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am when I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what you have made of yourself,
But for what you are making of me.
I love you for
the part of me that you bring out;
I love you for
putting your hand into my heaped-up heart
And passing over all the foolish, weak things
that you can’t help dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out into the light
All the beautiful things
that no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.
I love you because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it by being yourself
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means, after all.
24. “Sonnet 73” – Shakespeare
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
25. Ephesians 5:25, 28, 33
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”
26. Lyrics from “I Choose You” – Sara Bareilles
“There was a time when I would have believed them
If they told me, you could not come true
Just love’s illusion
But then you found me and everything changed
And I believe in something again
My whole heart will be yours forever
This is a beautiful start to a lifelong love letter”
27. Quote from “How I Met Your Mother”
“Love doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can’t logic your way in or out of it. Love is totally non-sensical. But we have to keep doing it, or else we’re lost, and love is dead, and humanity just packed in. Because love is the best thing we do.”
28. “Two Pebbles” – Vasko Popa, translated by Charles Simic
“Mutely they stare at each other
Two pebbles looking
Two sweets of yesterday
On the tongue of eternity
Two stone-tears of today
On the eyelid of the unknown
Two sand flies of tomorrow
In the ears of the deaf
Two happy dimples of tomorrow
On the cheeks of the day
Two victims of a little joke
Dumb joke without a joker
They stare at each other mutely
With their backsides they look
Speaking out of their bellies
Against the wind”
29. “A Wedding Toast” – James Bertolino
“May your love be firm,
and may your dream of life together
be a river between two shores—
by day bathed in sunlight, and by night
illuminated from within. May the heron
carry news of you to the heavens, and the salmon bring
the sea’s blue grace. May your twin thoughts
spiral upward like leafy vines,
like fiddle strings in the wind,
and be as noble as the Douglas fir.
May you never find yourselves back to back
without love pulling you around
into each other’s arms.”
30. Lyrics from “Sun and Moon” – Miss Saigon (musical)
“You are sunlight and I moon
Joined by the gods of fortune
Midnight and high noon
Sharing the sky
We have been blessed, you and I”
31. “To Love Is Not To Possess” – James Kavanaugh
“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.”
32. “Touched by an Angel” – Maya Angelou
“We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
Choosing the Right Alternative Wedding Reading
The abundance of options available can make it overwhelming for you and your partner to settle on an alternative wedding reading. Here are some steps to follow to make the decision-making process easier.
Reflect on Your Love Story
The most important thing your unique wedding reading should do is represent you and your partner. Choosing a reading is the perfect time to take a trip down memory lane, remember your firsts—first date, first kiss, and so on—and look back on significant milestones.
After this reflection, you can start looking for a wedding reading that beautifully matches your history and personality.
Consider Your Wedding Theme
Some alternative wedding readings are better suited for different themes. For instance, a poem or a quote that mentions the ocean will be excellent for a beach wedding. An excerpt from a show or a book that focuses on nature will be great for an outdoor or rustic wedding.
Look at Shared Interests and Beliefs
There are several types of unique alternative wedding readings:
- Poems
- Passages from books or short stories
- Readings from religions and sacred texts (e.g., the Bible, Qur’an)
- Quotes from pop culture (e.g., movies, songs)
From this list, you can choose which one suits your interests and beliefs most. For instance, if you and your partner are avid readers, consider taking an excerpt from a book or anthology of poems.
If you and your partner are religious, choose a verse from your sacred text; this choice can make your ceremony more meaningful.
If you and your partner love to bond by watching romcoms, rewatch your favorite one and see if there is a part of the script you can incorporate into your ceremony.
Consider the Tone of Your Ceremony
Some wedding readings are formal, literary, and ceremonious in tone. Other wedding readings are cheeky, cheesy, and overall informal. Make sure the unique wedding reading you choose matches the type and vibe of your ceremony.
Observe the Length of the Reading
If you have limited time for your ceremony, make sure to choose a wedding reading that is short but impactful. Some poems and excerpts might be too lengthy for such ceremonies.
However, if you really want to include a certain reading that may be too long, see if you can edit or omit specific parts to reduce the length.
Read the Wedding Reading Aloud
You will most probably choose a different person to read your choice of alternative wedding reading; in fact, this is a wonderful way to include close friends and relatives in your ceremony.
However, it is still a good idea to recite your wedding reading aloud. Doing so gives you an idea of how long it will take to finish reading and how emotionally impactful it will be.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the goal is to find a reading that reflects your unique love story, your relationship, and your personality. The reading will give your guests a glimpse of who you are as individuals and as a couple.
