Many couples choose to enrich their wedding ceremony with different wedding readings - Biblical or otherwise.  Below are a few examples of passages from the Bible and other works of literature you may want to consider using in your wedding ceremony.  Wedding readings offer the bride and groom an opportunity to include special relatives or friends in the ceremony as well as sharing loving sentiments to each other and the congregation.  Be sure and check with your house of worship to determine what literary sources are acceptable for use in the wedding ceremony.  Also, when using Biblical readings, you may want to read several different translations (such as the New American Standard, The Kings James Version or the Living Bible) to find the wording you prefer.

Biblical Readings:

Genesis 2:20-25
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a help mate for him.  And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and as he slept: he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;  And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7 
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
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.

1 Corinthians 13
I may be able to speak the languages of men and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell. I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains - but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burnt -but if I have no love, this does me no good.  Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail. Love is eternal. There are inspired messages, but they are temporary; there are gifts of speaking in strange tongues but they will cease. There is knowledge, but it will pass. For our gifts of knowledge and inspired massages are only partial; But when what is perfect comes, then what is partial will disappear. When I was a child, my speech, my feelings, and thinking were those of a child; Now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways. What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; Then we shall see face to face. What I know now is only partial; Then it will be complete - as complete as God's knowledge of me. Meanwhile these three remain; faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.

Colossians 3:12-16
You are the people of God; he loved you and chose you for his own.  So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against another, just as the Lord has forgiven you. And to all these add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.  The peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the decisions you make; for it is to this peace that God has called you together in the one body. And be thankful. Christ's message in all its richness must live in your hearts.

Other Readings

"I Promise"  by Dorothy R. Colgan

I promise to give you the best of myself and ask of you no more than I can give.
I promise to respect you as your own person and to realize that your interests, desires and needs are no less important than my own.
I promise to share with you my time and attention and to bring you joy, strength and imagination to our relationship.
I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you see through the window of my world into my innermost fears and feelings, secrets and dreams.
I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face changes in order to keep our relationship alive and exciting.
I promise to love you in good times and in bad, with all I have to give and all I feel inside the only way I know how.
Completely and forever.

"A Gift From the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One recognizes the truth of Saint Exupery's line: Love does not consist in gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction.  For in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they are working outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base....
Here one makes oneself part of the community of men, of human society.  Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love.  Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too, a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.

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