Wedding Ceremonies: The Readings
The four readings below are used most often in weddings.
The New Testament
Paul wrote First Corinthians, Chapter Thirteen a letter to a small Christian group about twenty or
twenty-five years after the death of Jesus. After A.D. 50 the new religion of Christianity was
spreading rapidly across the Mediterranean area. There were many new, growing groups and
there were many political restrictions placed on Paul’s travels. Therefore, he began to keep in
contact with the new groups writing letters in Greek on large sheets of papyrus. He sent out
personal letters to each congregation, intended to be read to the group when they together to
share in a ritual meal. In these letters he tried to respond to questions about proper conduct.
Because information was so meager in those early years of the Christian church, Christians often
copied these letters and sent them around to other nearby churches.
Paul was preparing people for the second coming of Jesus, whom he believed was the Messiah.
Today most Biblical scholars believe that Paul thought this second coming was only a few years
away, perhaps only a few months away. Paul’s letters, intended to guide these small churches for
a short time until Jesus returned, are today 2,000 year old scriptures.
There are many different translations. One commonly used in weddings is the King James Version
(KJV), called the Authorized Version (AV) in England. However, today most people replace the
word “charity” in the 1611 King James Version with the word “love.” This translation is likely to
be familiar to many persons attending a wedding service. Many of them may have used it at their
own service. They may have heard it at other weddings or as a reading in church. For many
people it is still the Bible, with its phrases and images deeply embedded in English-speaking
cultural history. When you use this reading, you may elicit in people the positive associations they
have with these words. These positive associations come from hearing these words in the past
during meaningful times in their lives.
There are many other English translations. The New Revised Standard Version, first published in
1989, is gaining wide acceptance among mainline Protestants. Scholars consider the NRSV the
most accurate revision of the King James Version. Many Protestants also use The Good News
Bible, published in 1976 by the American Bible Society. Roman Catholics use The New
American Bible and The Jerusalem Bible. The advantage of using a modern English translation is
that it is much more understandable. However, modern translations do not carry the long
emotional associations that the traditional King James Version carries.
The translators of the King James Version placed some words in italics to showto the reader that
these specific words were not present in the Greek text. The translators inserted the italicized
words for clarification. Below is the most often used reading in American wedding services,
although most ministers, priests and couples change the word charity to love.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am
become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all
faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And
though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is
kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; Doth not behave
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there
be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in
part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done
away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a
child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through
a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even
as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the
greatest of these is charity. First Corinthians, Chapter Thirteen, King James Version
The New Revised Standard Version, below, has the advantage of the most recent biblical
research and uses twentieth century English.
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
A Reading from The Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures
If there were ratings for the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, The Song of Songs (also translated
as The Song of Solomon) would be rated “R.” Full of elaborate imagery, it is a collection of
steamy love-poems, with no references to God. There are no other writings remotely like it
anywhere else in the Bible. The Song of Songs is popular at weddings because it is full of folk
poetry that affirms of the beauty of nature and of the human body.
There are many different interpretations of the book. Some believe the groom in the story is
symbolic of God and the bride is symbolic of the Jewish nation. For others the story is about two
lovers, or two lovers and a king. For still others, this book consists of wedding poems. The
poems were part of the seven-day wedding festivities among Syrian peasants. They treated the
groom and bride as king and queen. To honor them, the peasants recited poems describing the
physical beauty of the couple. Today one popular view is that the book is an anthology of secular
love poems .They were collected over five hundred years from the tenth century B.C. to the fifth
century B.C.
A prevailing interpretation is that the poems in the Song of Songs are from
” . . . ancient Hebrew New Year liturgies that celebrated the reunion and marriage of
the sun god with the mother goddess, which in the ancient world typified the revival
of life in nature that came with the return of the growing season. It is the literary
residue of a myth, a liturgy of life; it harks back to the ancient fertility cult which in its
many forms was found throughout the whole world and is not without its survivals
even in our own day, as witness features in our Easter celebration.”
The passage below is often used in wedding ceremonies.
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
Song of Songs, verses 2:8-10, 14, 16a; 8:6-7a
New Revised Standard Version
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Many couples want more than one reading at their wedding, or they prefer a reading from a
source other than the Bible. This is particularly true of a marriage in which one person in the
relationship is from a non-Christian background. A common reading often used in weddings is
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was born about 1564 and died in 1616; his sonnets were first published in 1609.
The sonnets may describe the author’s association with various persons, or they may have been
written as a story, of which each sonnet is one small part. They express forceful emotions and
strong feelings in a restricted word structure.
If you were not an English major in school, you may find Sonnet 116 difficult to understand. The
references in the poem may have been easily understood in England 400 years ago, but many are
not commonly understood today. Here is a rough translation: Shakespeare is saying that he does
not wish to interfere in the marriage of two people who love each other. He then proceeds to
define love. He says that love is not true love, if it changes when the couple disagrees, or if it
changes when the loved one is not always perfect. Love, says Shakespeare, is as reliable as the
North Star is to the mariner during stormy weather, never changing position in the sky. We can
depend on love in the same way sailors in their ships (wandering bark) depend on the North Star
by which to navigate; the nature of the star (and the nature of love) is unknown, although the
navigator can measure the height of the star from the horizon. Love does not change as time
passes, although physical beauty (rosy lips and cheeks) dies with time. Love does not change over
hours or weeks but stays the same, even to doomsday. Shakespeare ends the sonnet by saying
you can never prove him wrong on the subject of love because it is obvious that he wrote many
plays and poems, and that many people have loved.
Like scriptural readings, it takes careful practice to read Sonnet 116 well. However, like familiar
scriptural readings, it can bring forth strong positive feelings in the guests at a wedding service. If
you ask a friend or relative to read this at a wedding, encourage them to practice it aloud several
times before the service.
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.
Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare
A Passage by Kahlil Gibran
Many people have not studied Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and their reaction to hearing it read at
your wedding will be “I don’t know what this poem means.” Some couples may prefer a reading
written in modern English that all the people who come to the wedding service can understand.
There is a fourth reading commonly used in weddings. It is from The Prophet, written by the
romantic essayist Kahlil Gibran and published in 1923. Born in 1883 in Lebanon, Gibran
immigrated with his parents to Boston in 1895. In 1912 he settled in New York City and devoted
himself to writing and painting.
In this passage from The Prophet Gibran says that partners who are getting married should not
lose their individuality after their marriage. Because this desire not to lose our individual identity is
strong in British-American culture, the passage is often read in weddings.
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
The Prophet, pages 15-6
Additional Readings
The readings that follow are also used in wedding services. In selecting a reading, trust your
feelings. What words describe your feeling for your partner and your understanding of your
relationship?
Here in the space between us and the world
lies human meaning.
Into the vast uncertainty we call.
The echoes make our music,
sharp equations which can hold the stars,
and marvelous mythologies we trust.
This may be all we need
to lift our love against indifference and pain.
Here in the space between us and each other
lies all the future
of the fragment of the universe
which is our own.
From Sound of Silence
Raymond J. Baughan
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
From Standing by Words
Wendell Berry
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 everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the 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 love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile–her look–her way
Of speaking gently,–for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”–
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee–and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and love thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
e.e. cummings
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
New Revised Standard Version
Following this reading the officiant might say: “For everything there is a season, and a time for
every matter under heaven. Now is a time for a wedding.”
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to
strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in
all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last
parting?
From Adam Bede
George Eliot
Love is the simplest of all earthly things.
It needs no grandeur of celestial trust
In more than what it is, no holy wings:
It stands with honest feet in honest dust.
And is the body’s blossoming in clear air
Of trustfulness and joyance when alone
Two mortals pass beyond the hour’s despair
And claim that Paradise which is their own.
Amid a universe of sweat and blood,
Beyond the glooms of all the nations’ hate,
Lovers, forgetful of the poisoned mood
Of the loud world, in secret ere too late
A gentle sacrament may celebrate
Before their private altar of the good.
Arthur Davison Ficke
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
From To Have or to Be?
Erich Fromm
Marriage has certain qualities of contract, in which two people take on the housekeeping tasks of
living, together, to enhance life’s joy.
However, marriage is more than a contract. Marriage is commitment to take that joy deep,
deeper than happiness, deep into the discovery of who you most truly are. It is a commitment to a
spiritual journey, to a life of becoming-in which joy can comprehend despair, running through
rivers of pain into joy again.
And thus marriage is even deeper than commitment. It is a covenant — a covenant that says:
I love you.
I trust you.
I will be here for you when you are hurting, and when I am hurting, I will not leave.
It is a covenant intended not to provide haven from pain or from anger and sorrow. Life offers no
such haven. Instead, marriage is intended to provide a sanctuary safe enough to risk loving, to risk
living and sharing from the center of oneself. This is worth everything.
Margaret A. Keip
The hand which you each offer
to the other
is an extension of yourselves;
just as is the warmth and love
which you express to each other.
Cherish the touch,
for you are touching another life.
Be sensitive to its pulse,
and try to understand and respect its flow and rhythm,
just as you do your own.
Paul L’Herrou
If your love is to grow and deepen,
you must find a way to move
with each other;
perhaps in a slow and graceful dance
(bare feet firmly feeling the ground),
a dance, that circles and tests
and learns
as it gradually moves closer
to that place
where you can each
pass through the other
and turn and embrace
without breaking
or losing any part of yourselves
but only to learn more of who you each are
by your touching,
to find that you are each whole
and individual and separate
yet, in the same instant,
one, joined as a whole
that does not blur the two individuals
as you dance.
The music is there
if you will listen hard,
through the static and noise of life,
and other tunes that fill your heads.
You are here,
marking time to the music.
The dance can only begin
if you will take the first (and hardest)
tentative,
uncertain,
stumbling
steps.
Paul L’Herrou
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
From Gift from the Sea
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Christopher Marlowe
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
“Two Trees”
Janet Miles
* * * * * * * * *
It takes years to marry completely two hearts, even of the most loving and well assorted. A happy
wedlock is a long falling in love. Young persons think love belongs only to the brown-haired and
crimson-cheeked. So it does for its beginning. But the golden marriage is a part of love which the
Bridal day knows nothing of.
A perfect and complete marriage, where wedlock is everything you could ask and the ideal of
marriage becomes actual, is not common, perhaps as rare as perfect personal beauty. Men and
women are married fractionally, now a small fraction, then a large fraction. Very few are married
totally, and they only after some forty or fifty years of gradual approach and experiment.
Such a large and sweet fruit is a complete marriage that it needs a long summer to ripen in, and
then a long winter to mellow and season it. But a real, happy marriage of love and judgment
between a noble man and woman is one of the things so very handsome that if the sun were, as
the Greek poets fabled, a God, he might stop the world and hold it still now and then in order to
look all day long on some example thereof, and feast his eyes on such a spectacle.
Theodore Parker
The institution of marriage was begun
that a man and a woman
might learn how to love
and, in loving, know joy;
that a man and a woman
might learn how to share pain and loneliness
and, in sharing, know strength;
that a man and a woman
might learn how to give
and, in giving know communion.
The institution of marriage was begun
that a man and a woman
might through their joy,
their strength, and their communion,
become creators of life itself.
Marriage is a high and holy state,
to be held
in honor
among all men and women.
Marriage is a low and common state,
to be built
of the stuff
of daily life.
Men and women are not angels, nor are they gods.
Love can become hatred;
joy, sorrow,
marriage, divorce.
But human beings are not condemned to failure.
Love can grow even in a real world.
The wounds of sorrow can be healed,
And new life built on the learnings of the old.
This is the reason for our gathering today:
to renew our faith
in the strength of hope
and the power of love.
Kenneth W. Phifer
You ask what is this love we here affirm, and I answer, it is a covenant you make, one with the
other, a covenant born of commitment to each other’s well being and growth and commitment to
your relationship itself, allowing it the possibility of change and of growth. And so the covenant
reads:
Take time for each other and act always from a caring position. Allow each other time alone for
renewal and creativity. Be as honest as possible about feelings as well as actions. Share household
and routine tasks with role reversal as a reality. Listen to each other with intent beyond the words.
Allow other relationships and commitments in your lives. And make room in your covenant for the
children of your love and when the time comes to let them go, do so with joy and caring; then
come your primary relationship with fresh commitments to new beginnings.
Betty Pingel
There is an art to marriage as there is to any creative activity we human beings engage in. This art
asks that we pay attention to the little things as well as the big ones that are part of the closeness
of marriage. Never grow too old to hold hands. At least once each day, remember to say, “I love
you.” In so much as it is possible, develop the capacity to forgive and forget and heal quarrels as
they happen so that you do not go to bed angry. Your courtship should not end with the
honeymoon; so pay attention that you do not come to take each other for granted, and remember
to speak words of appreciation and demonstrate your gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is important to have a mutual sense of values and common objectives so that you stand together
as you work through the world and do things for each other, not as a duty or sacrifice, but in the
spirit of joy. Do not expect perfection of each other; perfection is only for the gods. But do give
each other room to grow and cultivate flexibility, patience, understanding, and sense of humor in
your relationship. And your marriage is not just for two people. Use it to form a circle of love that
gathers in your families and the children who may be part of your lives.
Find room for the things of the spirit and make your search for the good and the beautiful a
common search. In the words of a counselor, make yours a relationship in which “the
independence is equal, the dependent is mutual, and the obligation is reciprocal.” Remember that
standing together never means dissolving your individual selves into each other, but indeed means
the strengthening of the individuality of each. A good marriage evolves when two distinct souls
face life’s joy and its sorrow in harmony, not in unison.
This list sounds very long and very heavy, yet it is only a small part of what is required of two
people who would truly accept that making a marriage over the years is an artistic endeavor
worthy of our best efforts. It is not just another relationship in our lives; it is the one that gives us
courage and the support to reach out to other people in love and wholeness.
Betty Pingel
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
From Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by J.B. Greene and M. D. H. Norton
The Fountains mingle with the River
And the Rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?-
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother,
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe Shelley,”Love’s Philosophy”
(This passage is omitted because of copyright protection. It is included in the book, For As Long
As We Both Shall Live, available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-238-0658.)
Edited and adapted from Ross Snyder
I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
But offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you
earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid-up stores,
However convenient the dwellings,
You shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port,
And however calm the waters,
You shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you
You are permitted to receive it but a little while
Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before you,
The long brown path before you, leading wherever
you choose.
Say only to one another:
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Walt Whitman
BACK TO CONTENTS
E-Mail :rfritts@his.com
URL: http//www.his.com/~rfritts
Text – Copyright ©1993, 1996, Thomas Roger Fritts
Web Layout – Copyright ©1996, Thomas Roger Fritts
Revised – June 3, 1996