5 Modern Wedding Readings reflecting Humanist Values

Having a Humanist Wedding gives you complete flexibility to choose any words, reading or music that’s meaningful to you, making sure you have a really personalised wedding ceremony. If you are having a humanist wedding your celebrant can help you pick modern wedding readings that resonate with you both and reflect what’s important to you. 

I’m often asked to suggest wedding readings. For me, modern wedding readings reflect values including respect for the natural world and science, equality, compassion and hope. *Channels Claudia Winkleman* In no particular order...Here are five romantic wedding readings for a humanist wedding ceremony. 

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The Loving Mind by Robert Winston

So the evidence suggests that, over time, the first mad fever of love becomes replaced by a more solid partnership, one more ideally suited to the raising of children. But some research has suggested that the most long-lived relationships are those that preserve a degree of the earlier, less rational phase. 

Dr Ellen Berscheid, Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, was the first to identify the ‘pink-lens effect’ whereby couples in love idealise their partners and make over-optimistic judgements about them. We think, for instance, that our lovers are ‘brilliant’ and ‘wonderful’; we overestimate their intelligence, their honesty, their generosity and their looks. This effect has been shown to decrease over time.  In general we would expect that, as a relationship progresses, we become more realistic about our partner’s strengths and weaknesses – we ‘love them for what they are’, rather than some idealized, rose tinted  view we may have picked up in the initial frenzy of attraction.

So here is the absolutely obvious solution to life’s most complicated problem, it takes a degree of irrationality to make a happy marriage. But, certainly, an ability to ‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative’ is a great asset for any married couple.

You Deserve a Lover - Frida Kahlo

You deserve a lover who wants you disheveled, with everything and all the reasons that wake you up in a haste and the demons that won’t let you sleep.

You deserve a lover who makes you feel safe, who can consume this world whole if he walks hand in hand with you; someone who believes that his embraces are a perfect match with your skin.

You deserve a lover who wants to dance with you, who goes to paradise every time he looks into your eyes and never gets tired of studying your expressions.

You deserve a lover who listens when you sing, who supports you when you feel shame and respects your freedom; who flies with you and isn’t afraid to fall.

You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry.

Wild Awake by Hilary T Smith 

People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.

Summer and Austin have left their apartment for a house By Romie Stott

I meant to write a poem for your wedding

about superfluids. About quantized groupings

whose singular momentum pushes up and over containers –

about transmission of heat, creation of vortices,

the creation of h/m proportions of vortices

where h is Planck's constant –

a spun bucket that holds a dozen whirlpools.

I meant to write that you were aligned together

in the same quantum state,

and could not be contained. I meant to write

a poem of matter, of transition points –

of energy that transforms liquid to gas –

of boiling water at a steady temperature

as molecules leap into vapor.

They don’t use the term latent heat anymore.

I can’t use it to say you’ve changed states.

It was a long time building, only seeming

the same, like boiling water, as you transformed

into something that rises.

Finally by Author Unknown 

Finally, I have found a place into which I fit, 

Perfectly, safely and securely, with no doubts, no fears, no sadness, no tears. 

This place is filled with happiness and laughter, 

Yet it is spacious enough to allow me to move around, 

To live life and to be myself. 

This wonderful place, which I never believed really existed, I have found. 

Finally - in your arms, in your heart, in your love.

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These are just a handful of lovely modern wedding readings that I love and that I haven’t heard enough at weddings! They hit that sweet spot of being unusual wedding readings, but not unheard of wedding readings…

If none of these seem right, keep looking and ask your wedding celebrant for help finding your perfect wedding reading! Have Fun!

If you have any questions or if you’re ready to start planning your feel-good, fabulous day? Drop me a line and say hello or Join my free email community for monthly wedding planning support!

Thank you to the lovely Po Midwinter for the image!