Here are some of the readings that can be used during your wedding ceremony. We’re always looking for more!
WHAT IS MARRIAGE? - Collin McCarty
It is the most beautiful thing that can happen between two people in love. A Marriage is more than just a husband and a wife. It is a bridge, which allows the love of two very special people to give meaning and worth and wonder to life. It is a continual process of building; of shaping; of communicating and caring. It is the deepest and sweetest understanding. It is sharing today and tomorrows together and making each one more treasured and more complete than anyone could make of them alone. A marriage is a home interwoven with hopes and memories and dreams. The thankfulness and love it can bring have no comparison. Being happily married is the most beautiful thing that can happen...to anyone.
MY PROMISE TO LOVE YOU - Dorothy Colgan
I promise to give you the best of myself and to ask no more than you can give. I promise to accept you the way you are. I fell in love with you for the qualities, abilities and outlook on life that you have, and I won’t try to reshape you in a different image. I promise to respect you as a person with your own interests, desires and needs, and to realize that those are sometimes different - but no less important than my own. I promise to share with you my time, my close attention, and to bring joy and strength and imagination to our relationship. I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you see through the window of my personal world, my innermost fears, feelings, secrets and dreams. I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face
change as we both change, in order to keep our relationship alive and exciting. And finally, I promise to love you in good times and in bad, with all I have to give and all I feel inside, in the only way I know how...completely and forever.
THE ART OF MARRIAGE - Wilford Peterson
A good marriage must be created. In the art of marriage, the little things are the big things. It’s never being too old to hold hands. It’s remembering to say, “I love you,” every day. It’s never going to sleep angry. It’s having mutual values and common objectives. It’s forming a circle of love that now encompasses another family. It’s speaking words of appreciation, demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways. It’s having the capacity to forgive and to forget. It’s giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow. It’s finding room for the things of the spirit. It’s a common search for the good and beautiful in this life, but now hand in hand with your very best friend. You see, it’s not only marrying the right partner, but it’s being the right partner.
THE APACHE BLESSING - Unknown
Now for you there is no rain, for one is shelter to the other. Now for you there is no darkness, for one is light to the other. Now for you there is no pain, for one is counsel to the other. Now for you there is no cold, for one is warmth to the other. It is that way today, tomorrow, forever. Now it is good and there is always shelter. And now there is always warmth. And now there is always comfort. And there is no loneliness. Now, forever, forever you are as one.
HAWAIIAN BLESSING - Unknown
Life is once more alive within me for love of you. The secrets within me are seen through love. I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine. May the blessings of God Almighty be near to us to defend our place with each other, to refresh our hope in one another, around us to reserve our trust for each other, before us to guide our path of love for one another, behind us to justify our affirmation of each other, and above us to bless our love and faith in one another May we create a home that surrounds our family and friends with warmth, laughter and love. May our love last forever.
ON MARRIAGE - Kahil Gibran
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone although they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the Hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
THE LOVE VERSES - Apostle Paul. We usually include this in our message about marriage unless you ask us not to.
Love is patient, very kind. It knows no jealousy, it gives itself no parade or airs. It’s never rude, selfish, irritated or resentful. Love is gladdened by goodness; always slow to expose the worst, eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient. Love never disappears. Faith, hope and love last on, but of these three the greatest is love.
ON FRIENDSHIP - Roy Croft
I love you, not for what you are, but what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me you bring out. I love you for putting your hand into my heaped up heart and passing over all the frivolous and weak things you cannot help seeing there, and drawing out into light all the beautiful and radiant things that no one else has looked quite far enough to find. You have done it without a touch, without a sign. You have done it by being yourself.