Readings for an Outdoor Wedding

Readings have come to form such an integral part of UK wedding ceremonies; they can really help to set the tone for the ceremony, and are also a great way of including friends and family members in the proceedings. You may wish to choose a favourite poem, quote or extract from a book – ideally something that has meaning for you and really resonates with you as a couple.

Of course it’s your ceremony so you can choose any reading you like (with the exception of religious/spiritual readings in the case of registrar-led ceremonies), but there are some readings that seem particularly suited to weddings in the great outdoors. So if you would like your readings to incorporate not just love and marriage, but also nature and the beautiful world around us, here are a few that may inspire you!

And if you’re planning an outdoor wedding ceremony, don’t forget to visit the Outdoor Ceremonies Directory to find your dream venue and suppliers!

Outdoor Wedding Readings

My Delight and Thy Delight

My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:
My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher:
Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.
Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.
Love can tell, and love alone,
Whence the million stars were strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:
This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
‘Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.

Robert Bridges

A Marriage… Makes of Two Fractional Lives

A marriage… makes of two fractional lives
A whole; it gives to two purposeless lives
A work, and doubles the strength
Of each to perform it;
It gives to two questioning natures
A reason for living, and something to live for:
It will give you a new gladness to the sunshine,
A new fragrance to the flowers,
A new beauty to the earth,
And a new mystery to life.

Mark Twain

A Walled Garden

Your marriage should have within it,
A secret and protected place, open to you alone.
Imagine it to be a walled garden,
Entered by a door to which only you
Hold the key.
Within this garden you will cease to be
A mother, father, employee, homemaker
Or any other of the roles which you fulfil in daily life.
Here you are yourselves –
Two people who love each other.
Here you can concentrate on one another’s needs.
So take my hand and let us go back to our garden.
The time we spend together is not wasted but invested.
Invested in our future
And the nurture of our love.

Anon

Extract from Gift From The Sea

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity — in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits — islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, verses 10-13; Chapter 8, verses 6&7

My beloved speaks and says to me:
‘Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.’
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.

A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with the thickest fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleures-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life is come,
My love is come to me.

Christina Rossetti

Extract from A Red, Red Rose

Oh my love is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
Oh my love is like the melodie,
That’s sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till the seas gang dry –
Till all the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear
While the sands of life shall run.

Robert Burns

The Confirmation

Yes, yours, my love is the right human face,
I in my mind had waited for this long
Seeing the false and searching for the true.
Then I found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads.
But you, what shall I call you?
A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that’s honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright.
Your open heart, simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Nor beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Edwin Muir

Doves Poem

Two doves meeting in the sky
Two loves hand in hand, eye to eye
Two parts of a loving whole
Two hearts and a single soul
Two stars shining big and bright
Two fires bringing warmth and light
Two songs played in perfect tune
Two flowers growing into bloom
Two doves gliding in the air
Two loves free without a care
Two parts of a loving whole
Two hearts and a single soul
Two dreams found before too late
Two lives together bound by fate
Two people cling to one another
Two people in love with each other
Two doves, can you see them soar?
Two loves – who could ask for more?

Anon

May The Sun Bring You New Energy by Day

May the sun bring you new energy by day
May the moon softly restore you by night.
May the rain wash away your worries
And the breeze blow new strength into your being.
And all the days of your life may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty.
Now you can feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other.
Now there will be no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you.
Now go to your dwelling to enter into the days of your life together,
And may your days be good and long upon this earth.

From an American Indian ceremony

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’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.

William Shakespeare

Galactic Love Poem

Warm your feet at the sunset
Before we go to bed
Read our book by the light of Orion
With Sirius guarding your head
Then reach out and switch off the planets
We’ll watch them go out one by one
You kiss me and tell me you love me
By the light of the last setting sun
We’ll both be up early tomorrow
A new universe has begun.

Adrian Henri