Beautiful Nonreligious Readings for Your Wedding Ceremony

There’s something magical about hearing words that completely capture what love seems like—especially during your ceremony. When you’re planning a nonreligious celebration, you is perhaps on the lookout for readings that reflect your values, your vibe, and the depth of your connection without leaning into tradition or scripture. Whether you’re drawn to poetry, literature, or lyrical prose, this collection of 25 nonreligious readings offers a combination of timeless classics and fresh favorites to assist tell your love story.

From modern novels to romantic ballads, these pieces were made to maneuver hearts—and might just bring just a few joyful tears, too.

20 Nonreligious Readings for Your Wedding Ceremony

“Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare

Let me to not the wedding of true minds
Admit impediments. Love will not be love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it’s an ever-fixed mark
That appears on tempests and is rarely shaken;
It’s the star to each wandering bark,
Whose price’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s idiot, though rosy lips and cheeks
Inside his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not together with his temporary hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the sting of doom.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that not exists, in a house that not exists, on the sting of a field that not exists, where the whole lot was discovered, and the whole lot was possible. A stick might be a sword, a pebble might be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the sphere, from a lady who not exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. Within the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves of their hair.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a lady, and her laughter was an issue he desired to spend his whole life answering.”

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

“What I’m feeling, I feel, is joy. And it’s been a while since I’ve felt that blinkered rush of happiness. This is perhaps considered one of those rare events that lasts, one which’ll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. Considered one of those sweet, significant moments that leaves a footprint in your mind. A photograph couldn’t ever tell its story. It’s like something you may have to live to grasp. Considered one of those freak collisions of fizzing meteors and looming celestial bodies and floating debris and one single beautiful red ball that bursts into your life and thru your body like an infinite firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and the whole lot is sensible. And it becomes considered one of those things inside you, a pearl amongst sludge, considered one of those big exaggerated memories you’ll be able to invoke at any moment to peel away a bit layer of the way you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavour of grace.”

“Love is an Adventure” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops just like the universe itself only by perpetual discovery. The one right love is that between couples whose passion leads them each, one through the opposite, to the next possession of their being. Put your faith within the spirit which dwells between the 2 of you. You might have each offered yourself to the opposite as a boundless field of understanding, of enrichment, of mutually increased sensibility. You’ll meet above all by moving into and continuously sharing each other’s thoughts, affections, and dreams. There alone, as , in spirit, which is arrived through flesh, you will see no disappointments, no limits. There alone the skies are ever open to your love; there alone lies the nice road ahead.”

Every Day by David Levithan

“That is what love does: It makes you must rewrite the world. It makes you must select the characters, construct the scenery, guide the plot. The person you like sits across from you, and you must do the whole lot in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the 2 of you, alone in a room, you’ll be able to pretend that that is the way it is, that is how it should be.”

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

“Still,” Morrie said, “there are just a few rules I do know to be true about love and marriage: When you don’t respect the opposite person, you’re gonna have quite a lot of trouble. When you don’t know easy methods to compromise, you’re gonna have quite a lot of trouble. When you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have quite a lot of trouble. And if you happen to don’t have a typical set of values in life, you’re gonna have quite a lot of trouble. Your values should be alike.”

“And the most important considered one of those values, Mitch?”

Yes?

“Your belief within the importance of your marriage.”

He sniffed, then closed his eyes for a moment.

“Personally,” he sighed, his eyes still closed, “I feel marriage is a vital thing to do, and also you’re missing loads if you happen to don’t try it.”

He ended the topic by quoting a poem he believed in like a prayer: “Love one another or perish.”

“If I Should Fall Behind” by Bruce Springsteen

“We said we’d walk together, baby, come what may
That come the twilight should we lose our way
If as we’re walking a hand should slip free
I’ll wait for you
And may I fall behind
Wait for me

We swore we’d travel darlin’ side by side
We’d help one another stay in stride
But each lover’s steps fall so in another way
But I’ll wait for you
And if I should fall behind
Wait for me

Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true
But you and I do know what this world can do
So let’s make our steps clear that the opposite might even see
And I’ll wait for you
If I should fall behind
Wait for me

Now there’s a lovely river within the valley ahead
There ‘neath the oak’s bough soon we might be wed
Should we lose one another within the shadow of the evening trees
I’ll wait for you
And may I fall behind
Wait for me
Darlin’ I’ll wait for you
Should I fall behind, wait for me”

Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

“I not believed in the concept of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I used to be starting to consider that a only a few times in your life, if you happen to were lucky, you may meet someone who was exactly best for you. Not because he was perfect, or since you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”

Image by Kailash Wedding

Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith

“Individuals are like cities: All of us have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but more often than not all we let one another see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a refined square. Love allows you to find those hidden places in one other person, even those they didn’t know were there, even those they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.”

“In regards to the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her” by Dave Eggers

“When he met her they usually liked one another a fantastic deal, he heard things higher, and in his eyes, the lines of the physical world were sharper than before. He was smarter, he was more aware, and he thought of recent things to do together with his days. He considered activities which before had been vaguely intriguing but which now seemed urgent, and which must, he thought, be done together with his latest companion. He desired to fly in lightweight contraptions together with her. He had at all times been intrigued by gliders, parachutes, ultralights, and hang-gliders, and now he felt that this might be a facet of their latest life: that they’d be a pair that flew around on weekends and on vacations, in small aircraft. They’d learn the terminology; they’d join clubs. They’d have a trailer of some kind, or a big van, by which to carry their latest machines and supple wings folded, and they’d drive to latest places to see from above.

The sort of flying that interested him was near the bottom – lower than a thousand feet above the earth. He desired to see things moving quickly below him, desired to find a way to wave to people below, to see wildebeest run, and to count dolphins streaming away from shore. He hoped this was the sort of flying she’d need to do, too. He became so attached to the concept of this person and this flying and this life entwined that he was unsure what he would do if it didn’t turn out to be actual. He didn’t need to do that flying alone; he would relatively not do it than do it without her. But when he asked her to fly with him, and she or he expressed reservations, or was not inspired, would he stay together with her? Could he? He decides that he wouldn’t. If she doesn’t drive within the van with the wings fastidiously folded, he could have to depart, smile and leave, after which he’ll look again. But when and if he finds one other companion, he knows his plan is not going to be for flying. It should be one other plan with one other person because, if he goes flying near the earth, it should be together with her.”

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

“At night, there was the sensation that we had to come back home, feeling not alone, waking within the night to seek out the opposite one there, and never gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept once we were drained and if we woke the opposite one woke too so one was not alone. Often a person wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and in the event that they love one another they’re jealous of that in one another, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone once we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid once we were together.”

“Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix perpetually
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing on the planet is single:
All things by a law divine
In one other’s being mingled—
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp each other;
No sister flower might be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the daylight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the ocean;
What are all these kissings price,
If thou kiss not me?

Jazz by Toni Morrison

“It’s nice when grown people whisper to one another under the covers. Their ecstasy is more leaf-sigh than bray and the body is the vehicle, not the purpose. They reach, grown people, for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue. They’re remembering while they whisper the carnival dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. The pears they let hang on the limb because in the event that they plucked them, they’d be gone from there and who else would see that ripeness in the event that they took it away for themselves? How could anybody passing by see them and picture for themselves what the flavour could be like? Respiratory and murmuring under covers each of them have washed and frolicked on the road, in a bed they selected together and kept together nevermind one leg was propped on a 1916 dictionary, and the mattress, curved like a preacher’s palm asking for witnesses in His name’s sake, enclosed them every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love.”

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

“It has made me higher loving you…it has made me wiser, and easier, and — I won’t pretend to disclaim — brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a fantastic many things before, and to be offended that I didn’t have them. Theoretically, I used to be satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself, I had limited my wants. But I used to be subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful suits of hunger, of desire. Now I actually am satisfied, because I can’t consider anything higher.”

Every thing is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

“I like you furthermore mght means I like you greater than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and in addition, I like you in a way that nobody loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and in addition, I like you in a way that I like nobody else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.”

Image by Cristiana Fiorini

Every thing I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

The best way love sees you. The best way love celebrates you. The best way love accepts you exactly as you’re, and still encourages you to grow.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

After we love, we at all times strive to turn out to be higher than we’re. When we attempt to turn out to be higher than we’re, the whole lot around us becomes higher too.

“Touched by An Angel” by Maya Angelou

 We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of enjoyment
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we’re daring,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We’re weaned from our timidity
Within the flush of affection’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we’re
and can ever be.
Yet it is just love
which sets us free.

“I Carry Your Heart With Me” by E.E. Cummings

 I carry your heart with me (I carry it in
my heart) I’m never without it (anywhere
I’m going you go, my dear; and whatever is completed
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate (for you’re my fate, my sweet) I need
no world (for beautiful you’re my world, my true)
and it’s you’re whatever a moon has at all times meant
and whatever a sun will at all times sing is you

here is the deepest secret no person knows
(here is the basis of the basis and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and that is the wonder that’s keeping the celebs apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

“The Master Speed” by Robert Frost

 No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you may have speed far greater. You possibly can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you got this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that it’s possible you’ll go where you’ll,
But in the push of the whole lot to waste,
That you could have the ability of standing still—

Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two equivalent to you with such a master speed
Can’t be parted nor be swept away
From each other once you’re agreed
That life is just life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Modern Love (Amazon Prime, S1E1)

“Love, for essentially the most part, is about endurance. It’s in regards to the quiet moments, the unglamorous routines, the little acts of being there. And if you look back, it won’t be the grand declarations that made it work. It’ll be the time they waited with you on the hospital, or made your coffee exactly the way you prefer it. Love is what’s left when the whole lot else has burned away.”

About Time

“We’re all traveling through time together, daily of our lives. All we will do is do our greatest to relish this remarkable ride.
I just attempt to live daily as if I’ve deliberately come back to this at some point, to enjoy it—as if it was the complete final day of my extraordinary, extraordinary life.
And in the long run, I feel that’s the actual takeaway: the perfect a part of life is the people you select to spend it with. The mornings, the walks, the shared jokes, the quiet dinners. That’s what time travel can’t replace. That’s what love really is.”

Anne of Green Gables (1985 adaptation)

“Perhaps, in any case, romance didn’t come into one’s life with pomp and blare… perhaps it crept to at least one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways.
Perhaps it revealed itself in the simplest and extraordinary things—like a smile, a look, a touch… and, perhaps, love unfolded naturally out of a lovely friendship, because it had at all times meant to.”

Your Name Engraved Herein 

“Some people come into your life quietly—like a song you didn’t realize you really liked until you hear it again.
They don’t change the whole lot all of sudden. They only remind you that you just’re not alone.
And little by little, love becomes a part of you.
Not loud. Not perfect. But lasting.”

Soul (Pixar)

“Life isn’t about one big moment. It’s the little things: walking with someone you like, sharing amusing, watching the sunshine hit their face excellent.
Love is within the noticing. The extraordinary days that grow to be the whole lot.
And perhaps the entire point isn’t to chase the grand purpose, but to like deeply, and really live, right where you’re.”

Now that you just’ve found a reading (or three) that speaks to your heart, it’s time to bring the remaining of your ceremony vision to life. From writing your vows to planning the proper flow, our ultimate guide to planning your wedding ceremony has the whole lot you must make it personal, meaningful, and truly you.

Image by Giulia Alessandri