Wedding Readings | Wedding Reading Ideas

If you are not getting wedding readings through your officiant or place of worship then you are in the unlucky situation of trying to find wedding readings. This can be very tricky, especially if you have a low threshhold for sparmy poetry or your views of romance do not involve waxing poetic in a 19th century voice. You may also have a unique wedding and feel stuck with very UNunique wedding reading options.

My brother pointed out when he got married that most wedding readings fall into two categories:

Wedding Readings about How Single Life Sucks
or
Wedding Readings about How You Can Not Understand Marriage Until You’ve Been Married 40 Years

When he said this, I had to laugh! Indeed, the readings are about the horrible storms of life and how it’s so miserable to be alone…a solitary soul in this vast, miserable world. Or the readings talk about the stupid, naive, innocent, fresh young love of a newlywed and only those older, wiser married couples can truly understand what love is.

So here’s your homework… help me find wedding readings that you like!

If this is too smarmy for you:

HOW DO I LOVE THEE~ By Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

and this is too overused:

1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-8a


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.

Then email us and let us know what you like. We’ll share it with others on our wedding readings page.

– Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty. The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning. Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.