Alternative Readings for Modern Wedding Ceremonies

Even the most beautiful wedding ceremony script can be enhanced with a reading. But if you’ve chosen a non-traditional, alternative kind of script, you might want to move beyond a “Love is patient, love is kind” kind of reading. While those words undoubtedly convey a beautiful truth, we’ve all heard them a million times before, and they might not fit your non-traditional, alternative wedding ceremony. Below you’ll find poetry and prose that could just be the modern wedding reading you were looking for!

Habitation by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire.

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: The honest description of the the cold glaciers that sometimes enter a marriage, and the beautiful presence of the wonder of learning, again and again, how to make fire.

Excerpt from Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: Be radical and rebellious with your love! A generative vision of loving with no strings attached.

Excerpt from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches…I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids…

I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I…”

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: Who doesn’t love The Princess Bride and it’s sweet romance? Though we sometimes find “romantic” readings to be a little too syrupy, The Princess Bride always gets a pass.

You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars by e. e. cummings

Silently if, out of not knowable
night’s utmost nothing, wanders a little guess
(only which is this world) more of my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile
sings or if (spiraling as luminous
they climb oblivion) voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss
losing through you what seemed myself, I find
selves unimaginably mine; beyond
sorrow’s own joys and hoping’s very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return
–you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: e e cummings loops and twists of beautiful language that one might get lost in always pack a punch.

All I Know About Love by 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.

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: We love how these words make clear the idea your love and relationship and marriage is yours alone, and that you will learn what you need to know about love and marriage by experiencing love and marriage.

Everything I know About Love by Dolly Alderton

I know that love can be loud and jubilant…It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them.

It’s laughing until you wheeze. snort.

It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.

It’s skinny-dipping at dawn. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.

It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.

I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.

It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.

It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine (for the hundredth time)

It’s saying ‘You’re safer here than in a car’ as they hyperventilate on an EasyJet flight to Dublin.

It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’.

I know that love happens under the splendor of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.

Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: We love the presence of all the big swoony feelings and adventures, and the love found in quiet, humdrum moments.

It’s You I Like by Mr. Fred Rogers

It’s you I like.
Not the things you wear,
Not the way you do your hair,
But it’s you I like.
The way you are right now.
The way down deep inside you.
Not the things that hide you.
Not your toys,
They’re just beside you.
It’s you I like.
Every part of you.
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings,
Whether old or new.
I hope that you remember
Even when you’re feeling blue,
That it’s you I like.
It’s you yourself.
It’s you.
It’s you I like.

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: Ummmm… Mr Rogers. Sharing Mr Rogers’ words during your wedding ceremony is surely an auspicious invocation!

I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion.

What we love about this alternative wedding reading: Like The Princess Bride reading, this one is sweetly romantic, without being too syrupy. It’s fun and a little funny, and a great lighthearted reading to include in your ceremony.

We hope this helps you pick out some alternative readings for your wedding ceremony. We have loads of other readings on the site, so take a look around!