Love Poetry and Wedding Ceremony Readings

I promise to give you the best of myself
and to ask of you no more than you 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 my attention
and to bring 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 bad,
with all I have to give and all I feel inside in the only way I know how.
Completely and forever.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime decllines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ou'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

See what flowers are at my feet,
What soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
Wherewith the seasonable mouth endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorne, fast-fading violets
And the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunts of summer eves.

We said we'd walk togeter, baby come what may
That come the twilight should we lose our way
If as we're walking a hand should slip free
I'll wait for you
And if I should fall behind
Wait for me. We swore we'd travel, darlin' side by side
We'd help each other stay in stride
But each other's steps fall so differently
But I'll wait for you
And if I should fall behind
Wait for me. Now everyone dreams of love lasting and true
But you and I know what this world can do
So let's make our steps clear that the other may see
And I'll wait for you.
If I should fall behind, wait for me.
Now there's a beautiful river in the valley ahead,
There ‘neath the oak's bough soon we will be wed
Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
I'll wait for you.
And should I fall behind,wait for me.
Darlin' I'll wait for you.
Should I fall behind, wait for me.

The love you share will change, moment by moment.
To maintain the foundation you have already built,
you must place your faith in the ebb and flow of life,
of love, of relationships.
We encourage you to leap at the flow of the tide
and not resist its ebb, for it will always return.
The only true continuity, in life as in love,
is in growth, in fluidity...in freedom,
in the sense that dancers are free,
barely touching as they pass,
but partner in the same pattern.

Away from you there is no music,
There is no sunlight,
The world is gray.
Away from you
The clocks are frozen,
And time's a traveler
Who's lost his way.

I'm half alive
Until the moment
The door swings open
and you walk through,
Now my soul is afloat
On a melody of music
That I could feel such joy
I never knew.
And so you see
Why I can never be
Away from you.

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
the winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law of divine
In another's being mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another,
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

Perhaps perfection seems too bold
A word here to apply.
For once love penetrates the heart,
It spreads to cloud the eye.

Still we in blindness take a chance
And gladly join in Cupid's dance.
For every joyful heart has shown,
Perfection dwells in love alone.

I Love You,
Not only for what you are,
but for what I am when I am with you,
not only for what you have made of yourself,
but for what you are making of me.
I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
I love you for putting your hand into my overflowing heart
and passing over all the foolish, weak things that can't help,
dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the
beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.
I love you because you are helping me to make of the dreams of my life
not a thought but a reality,
Out of the works of my every day not a reproach but a song...
Yes, a Love song.

Love is a friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet, understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad. It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weakness. Love is content with the present. It hopes for the future and it doesn't brood over the past. It's the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals. If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it is not enough, so search for it, ask God for it, and share it!

Because to the depths of me, I long to love one person,
With all my heart, my soul, my mind, my body...

Because I need a forever friend to trust with the intimacies of me,
Who won't hold them against me,
Who loves me when I'm unlikable,
Who sees the small child in me, and
Who looks for the divine potential of me...

Because I need to cuddle in the warmth of the night
With someone who thanks God for me,
With someone I feel blessed to hold...

Because marriage means opportunity
To grow in love in friendship...

Because marriage is a discipline
To be added to a list of achievements...

Because marriages do not fail, people fail
When they enter into marriage
Expecting another to make them whole...

Because, knowing this,
I promise myself to take full responsibility
For my spiritual, mental and physical wholeness
I create me, I take half of the responsibility for my marriage
Together we create our marriage...

Because of this understanding
The possibilities are limitless.

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 every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old grief's, 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 but love thee better after death.

I cannot promise you a life of sunshine;
I cannot promise riches, wealth, or gold;
I cannot promise you an easy pathway
That leads away from change or growing old.

But I can promise all my heart's devotion;
A smile to chase away your tears of sorrow;
A love that's ever true and ever growing;
A hand to hold in yours through each tomorrow.

Yes, I'll Marry You

Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
for one lone soul, another lonely soul -
Each chasing each through all the weary hours,
And meeting strangely at one sudden goal;
Then blend they - like green leaves with golden flowers,
Into one beautiful and perfect whole -
And life's long night is ended, and the way
Lies open onward to eternal day.

From this day forward,
You shall not walk alone.
My heart will be your shelter,
And my arms will be your home.

I'll paint a sun to warm your heart
Knowing that we'll never part.
I'll draw the years all passing by
So much to learn, so much to try.

I'll paint my mood in a shadow blue,
Paint my soul to be with you.
I'll sketch your lips in shaded tones,
Draw your mouth to my own.

I'll trace a hand to wipe your tears
And trace a look to calm your fears.
A silhouette of dark and light
To hold each other oh so tight.

I'll paint the stars in the evening sky,
Draw the light into your eyes,
A touch of love, a touch of grace,
To softly fall on your moonlit face.

And with this ring our lives will start,
Let nothing keep our love apart.
I'll take your hand to hold in mine,
And be together through all time.

Geniuses of countless nations
Have told their love for generations
Till all their memorable phrases
Are common as goldenrod or daisies.
Their girls have glimmered like the moon,
Or shimmered like a summer moon,
Stood like a lily, fled like a fawn,
Now the sunset, now the dawn,
Here the princess in the tower
There the sweet forbidden flower.
Darling, when I look at you
Every aged phrase is new,
And there are moments when it seems
I've married one of Shakespeare's dreams.

May your marriage bring you all the exquisite
excitement marriage should bring,
and may life grant you also patience,
tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another -
not so much to fill your emptiness
as to help you to know your fullness.
A mountain needs a valley to be complete;
the valley does not make
the mountain less, but more;
and the valley is more a valley because
it has a mountain towering over it.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice one another, but not compel one another.
May you embrace one another, but not out encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another,
and not fail in the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!"
and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart,
may both of you hope to have
good sense enough to take the first step back.
May you enter into the mystery which is
the awareness of one another's
presence - no more physical than spiritual,
warm and near when you are
side by side, and warm and near when
you are in separate rooms
or even distant cities.
May you have happiness,
and may you find it making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it loving one another.

When two people are at one
in their inmost hearts
They shatter even the strength of iron
or of bronze
And when two people understand each other
in their inmost hearts
Their words are sweet and strong
like the fragrance of orchids.

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

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-fix'd 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate...
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.