Books

11 Romantic Poems For Weddings You Haven't Heard A Million Times

by Sadie Trombetta

It may still be the dead of winter, but sooner than you know it, 2018's official wedding season will be here — are you ready to walk down the isle this year? Whether you're planning your own big day or helping a friend organize their's, you're going to want to find some romantic poems for weddings you haven't heard a million times if you want the event to be truly unique. You may have had your heart set on a Rumi reading, but trust me when I say no one needs to hear "This Marriage" during a ceremony ever again.

Everyone wants their special day to be exactly that: special. There are a million details that go into getting a wedding to be *perfect*, from the flower arrangements and table settings to the bridesmaid dresses and the first dance song, and everything in between. One of the most important details, and one of the hardest to get just right, is always the wedding reading.

It may be easy to choose a unique wedding dress or find an original party favor, but it is a lot harder to select a poem to read at your wedding that hasn't been read at a million weddings before it. Popular romantic poems, like one of William Shakespeare's many love sonnets or Emily Dickinson's "Hope is a thing with feathers," have become predictable parts to almost any wedding, and while they are still beautiful and meaningful, they tend to feel less and less powerful the more ceremonies they appear in.

That is why, for your own wedding, you need a truly unique poem that hasn't been already been overshared. Whether you're a hopeless romantic or a modern pragmatist, one of these 11 love poems will help you create a wedding that is uniquely you.

"checklist" by Rupi Kaur

can i picture us in old age
conquering the world
like we've got young blood
running in our veins

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"A poem by Tolkien to his wife, Edith" by J.R. Tolkien

that we have become
as one, deep rooted in the soil
of Life and tangled in the sweet growth.

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"Coming Home" by Mary Oliver

and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish

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"Habitation" by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house, or even a tent
it is before that, and colder

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"Tear It Down" by Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.

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"Marriage of Many Years" by Dana Gioia

My finger on your thigh does not touch skin—
it touches your skin warming to my touch.
You are a language I have learned by heart.

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"Epithalamium" by Carl Adamshick

Here you go
light low and long
in the fields
at sunset and sunrise

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'Serenade' by Djuna Barnes

Three paces in the moonlight's glow I stand,
And here within the twilight beats my heart.
I'm not asking you to finish
But—to start.

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"All I Ever Wanted" by Katie Ford

To want to make a fire with someone,
with you,
was all.

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"Heart to Heart" by Rita Dove

Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

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"Cave Dwellers" by A. Poulin, Jr.

We can live here, love, safe from elements.
We’ll invent another love that can’t destroy.
We’ll make exquisite reproductions of our
selves, immortal on these walls.

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