Wedding Poems to Read Aloud
Curated by the Writory editorial team. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer: Read 12 of the best wedding poems to read aloud, from Shakespeare and Burns to Barrett Browning and Wilde. Full texts chosen for the day and the reader's voice.
A wedding reading has one job: to say, better than the couple could, what they feel. The poems here are the classics that keep being chosen, because they were built to be said to one person and still work that way centuries on.
Shakespeare fixes love as the star that never moves. Barrett Browning and Wilde write straight to the ones they married. Burns reaches for a red rose and a folk tune, and everyone in the room understands.
A practical note: read it slowly and to your partner, not to the crowd. Choose a length you can manage with a full heart, and if in doubt, a sonnet is fourteen lines for a reason.
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan
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-fixed 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.
The plainest vow in English, and the most read at weddings: love as the fixed star that outlasts every storm.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan
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 declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
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.
A compliment that kept its promise. Beloved for weddings because it makes the beloved, quite literally, immortal.
The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
Christopher Marlowe · Elizabethan
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountain yields.
There we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
Come live with me, and be my love. Young love making its whole case out of everything it promises to give.
Song To Celia - II
Ben Jonson · Renaissance
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
Drink to me only with thine eyes. You have hummed the tune without knowing it was four hundred years old.
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns · Romantic
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile.
Till a' the seas gang dry. Burns's folk-song plainness that every later love poem has quietly tried to steal.
She Walks in Beauty
George Gordon, Lord Byron · Romantic
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Byron at his most tender, beauty held as a truce between the dark and the light. A favourite for the vows.
Love's Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley · Romantic
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?--
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
A flirtation dressed as natural law: everything in the world embraces, so why not you and me?
Sonnet 40 - Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning · Victorian
Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.
I have heard love talked in my early youth,
And since, not so long back but that the flowers
Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth
For any weeping. Polypheme's white tooth
Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers,
The shell is over-smooth,--and not so much
Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate
Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such
A lover, my Beloved! thou canst wait
Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,
And think it soon when others cry 'Too late.'
To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems
Oscar Wilde · Victorian
I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.
For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.
And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.
Wilde lays his book at his wife's feet like flowers, a graceful and modest reading for a ceremony.
Marriage Bells
Emma Lazarus · American
Music and silver chimes and sunlit air,
Freighted with the scent of honeyed orange-flower;
Glad, friendly festal faces everywhere.
She, rapt from all in this unearthly hour,
With cloudlike, cast-back veil and faint-flushed cheek,
In bridal beauty moves as in a trance
Alone with him, and fears to breathe, to speak,
Lest the rare, subtle spell dissolve perchance.
But he upon that floral head looks down,
Noting the misty eyes, the grave sweet brow--
Doubts if her bliss be perfect as his own,
And dedicates anew with inward vow
His soul unto her service, to repay
Richly the sacrifice she yields this day.
A Birthday
Christina Rossetti · Victorian
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset 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 fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
My heart is like a singing bird, because my love is come to me: pure joy, and perfect for the day.
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art
John Keats · Romantic
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Keats's wish to be as constant as the star, said beside the one he loves. A quiet, steadfast vow.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best poem to read at a wedding?
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds,' is the most chosen of all. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets and Burns's 'A Red, Red Rose' are close behind.
Are there short wedding poems?
Yes. Burns's 'A Red, Red Rose,' Shakespeare's sonnets and Wilde's 'To My Wife' are all short enough to read comfortably during a ceremony.
How do I pick a wedding reading?
Choose one that sounds like the two of you and that the reader can get through with feeling. Practise it aloud, and pick length by nerve as much as by taste.
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