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Wedding Ceremony Samples

Read "Wedding Ceremony with Shakespeare & Khalil Gibran"

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I take no credit for this ceremony script: love birds from Ames, IA put this together for their wedding ceremony and I was happy and honored to perform it. It contains paragraphs from Shakespeare and Khalil Gibran and it is very sweet. Notice that this wedding ceremony script also contains a paragraph from the Bible, making the ceremony a bridge of harmony between a more conservative side and a more liberal side.

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 proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

At least that’s what Sir. Shakespeare believed

 

Hello and welcome!

We gathered together here in the family to celebrate the love which Bride and Groom have for each other, to give social recognition to their decision to commit their lives and accept each other completely, to learn how to help and understand each other, to build a family, and together, to travel through life.

If any of you has anything to say that might change their minds… they… don’t want to hear it J However, they do want to hear from you that you are their village, that you will always be their family, and will always support and encourage them as they discover the commitment and dedication needed to make marriage work. And that is why you are here today.

 

So Bride and Groom, please focus your attention on one another and also answer my questions:

Bride, "Do you take Groom to be your wedded husband, to share your life openly, standing with him, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in hardship and in ease, to cherish and to love, so long as you both shall live?"

Groom, "Do you take Bride to be your wedded wife, to share your life openly, standing with her, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in hardship and in ease, to cherish and to love, so long as you both shall live?"

 

Before you exchange rings and vows, I’d like to remind you what the Bible has to say about love: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 

Best Man, may we have the rings please?

Groom as you place this ring on Bride’s hand, please repeat after me

I take you Bride to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and, in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

Bride as you place this ring on Groom’s hand, please repeat after me

I take you Groom to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and, in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

 

Bride and Groom,

You were born together and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

And you shall be together in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

 

Mr. Happilymarried, you may kiss your bride.

I am honored to present to you Bride and Groom Happilymarried