Wedding Poems
Find the perfect poems to read and share at weddings.
There is a long and rich tradition linking poetry to the marriage ceremony, beginning with the Greeks, who invented a form known as the epithalamium. Whether you’re looking for a poem to read for your significant other or to toast the newly married couple, browse this selection of popular wedding poems to share for any type of couple or ceremony.
Popular Classic Poems to Read at Weddings
1 Corinthians 13:4–7, from World English Bible
Love is patient and is kind…
“How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
“Now” by Robert Browning
Out of your whole life give but one moment!…
“This Union” by Hafez
This / Union you want...
“[Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape]” by Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape...
“Epithalamion, [Happy Bridegroom]” by Sappho
Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings…
“Sonnet 18 [Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?]” by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…
“Sonnet 116 [Let me not to the marriage of true minds]” by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds…
“Marriage Morning” by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Light, so low upon earth…
“Song of the Open Road, I” by Walt Whitman
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road…
Popular Contemporary Poems
“Habitation” by Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not / a house or even a tent...
“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” by E. E. Cummings
somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond…
“On Marriage” by Kahlil Gibran
Love one another, but make not a bond of love...
“Scaffolding” by Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building...
“A Blessing for Wedding” by Jane Hirshfield
Today when persimmons ripen…
“Epithalamion” by Rickey Laurentiis
She drew a name full of winning flesh…
“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes…
“So Much Happiness” Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do…
“Stories About Love / Wedding Poem for Ada & Lucas” by Jason Schneiderman
In one story, the lovers are two halves...
“Re-Statement of Romance” by Wallace Stevens
The night knows nothing of the chants of night…
More Classic Wedding Poems
“To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet
If ever two were one, then surely we …
“Love” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We cannot live, except thus mutually …
“A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns
O my luve’s like a red, red rose …
“She Walks in Beauty” by George Gordon Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night …
“The Love Unfeigned” by Geoffrey Chaucer
O Yonge fresshe folks, he or she …
“Love” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All thoughts, all passions, all delights …
“The Good-Morrow” by John Donne
I wonder by my troth, what thou and I …
“Invitation to Love” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Come when the nights are bright with stars...
“Eros” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sense of the world is short …
“A Great Need” by Hafez
Out …
“Of Love: A Sonnet” by Robert Herrick
How love came in I do not know …
“The Awakening” by James Weldon Johnson
I dreamed that I was a rose …
“Endymion, Book I [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]” by John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever …
“Sonnet VII [O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell]” by John Keats
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell …
“Paradise Lost, Book IV, Lines 639-652” by John Milton
With thee conversing I forget all time …
“[Do you still remember: falling stars]" by Rainer Maria Rilke
Do you still remember: falling stars...
“A Ditty” by Sir Philip Sidney
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his …
“Epithalamion” by Edmund Spenser
Ye learnèd sisters, which have oftentimes …
“We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d” by Walt Whitman
We two, how long we were fool’d …
Additional Resources
All My Poems Are Love Poems: When Two Poets Fall in Love
Love poetry is about as old as love itself, from Homer’s vision of Penelope’s steadfastness, to the biblical Song of Solomon, to Shakespeare’s sonnets for his “Dark Lady” (or, some speculate, Dark Lord), to Keats’s love songs for his own depression. Most poets, at one time or another, write their way into the hearts of their chosen partners, but sometimes something slightly more unusual happens: two poets fall in love with each other.
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Dear Dainty Delicious Darlings
To poets such as Lewis Carroll, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Charles Olson, Alexander Pope, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, and W. B. Yeats, love letters were the means by which they could send “A hundred thousand kisses, darling!” (Joyce) or just “a hundred and eighty-two” (Carroll), whether they had been “prepared by drinking” (Pope) or written “wildly...not stopping to think” (Dunbar). Read letters to and from these poets and more.
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