Below is a selection of poetry which can be used within your marriage service. A marriage performed by a celebrant can include any number of poems or readings which express your feelings for each other. My intention is always to create a uniquely personal and meaningful ceremony for each couple – which means that you are free to incorporate any words, poems or songs that are significant or meaningful to you.

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 thee with the 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.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning


 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
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd
And every fair from fair sometimes declines
by chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd
but the 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

Love one another and you will be happy.
It's as simple and difficult as that.
There is no other way.
- Michael Leunig

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 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.
- Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"

Love is like friendship caught on fire.
In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce
but still only light and flickering.
As love grows older our hearts mature
and our Love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
- Author unknown