Wedding Readings

Having trouble selecting that special reading or poem for your wedding ceremony? Here are Something Borrowed’s top picks:

Religious Readings:

Ruth 1:16-17 (NIV)But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

1 John 4:7-12 (NIV)7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7 (NIV)
6 Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

And of course, the classic: 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8aIf I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Poems:

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) by ee cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no 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)

Sonnet CXVI, by William Shakespeare
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.O no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks, within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Looking For Your Face, by Rumi
From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face, but today I have seen it. Today I have seen the charm, the beauty, the unfathomable grace of the face that I was looking for. Today I have found you, and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday are sorry that they were not looking as I did. I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty, and wish to see you with a hundred eyes. My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold. I am ashamed to call this love human, and afraid of God to call it divine. Your fragrant breath, like the morning breeze, has come to the stillness of the garden. You have breathed new life into me. I have become your sunshine, and also your shadow. My soul is screaming in ecstasy. Every fiber of my being is in love with you. Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart, and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky. My arrow of love has arrived at the target. I am in the house of mercy, and my heart is a place of prayer.

A Love Poem of Sorts

If you are looking for some type of poem to read at your wedding, print in your program, or say as part of your vows the old standards likely come to mind. But if you are hoping to track down something a little more unique than "love is not love which alters when alteration finds..." here are a few other options to think about:

Scaffolding by Seamus HeaneyMasons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

A Marriage by Michael Blumenthal

You are holding up a ceiling with both arms.

It is very heavy, but you must hold it up, or else

it will fall down on you. Your arms are tired, terribly tired

and, as the day goes on, it feels as if either your arms

or the ceiling will soon collapse.

But then, unexpectedly,

something wonderful happens:

Someone, a man or a woman,

walks into the room and holds their arms up

to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get to take down your arms.

You feel that relief of respite, the blood flowing back

to your fingers and arms.

And when your partner's arms tire,

you hold up your own to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this for many years

without the house falling.