10 Bible verses for a wedding ceremony
A collection to read, save, and share · 10 verses
Every wedding needs two or three verses, and someone has to choose them.
If that someone is you, this page is arranged the way a ceremony is: readings for the middle, blessings for the end, and a few short lines that fit inside vows without swallowing them.
1 Corinthians 13 is here, because it belongs here. But so are the quieter choices — the ones guests lean forward for because they have not heard them at the last four weddings.
Classic readings
“Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”
The most read wedding passage in the world, and it earns it. Read slowly — it is a working definition, not a decoration, and every clause will be needed within the year.
“Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.”
The oldest wedding text there is. Leave, join, become — three verbs that describe what is actually happening at the front of the room.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow… and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Unsentimental and therefore durable. The threefold cord is the line couples remember — two people, and God as the third strand.
“Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it.”
The Bible’s own love poetry, at full strength. Best read by someone who will not rush it.
Blessings for the couple
“The LORD bless you, and keep you. The LORD make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you. The LORD lift up his face toward you, and give you peace.”
The blessing to end the ceremony with. Three thousand years old and still the best closing words available.
“Where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.”
Spoken by a daughter-in-law, not a bride — which is precisely why it works. It is loyalty chosen freely, which is what a wedding is.
“Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.”
One sentence that can carry a whole homily. Love here is the belt that holds every other virtue in place.
“This is the day that the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it!”
For the opening welcome. It gives the whole room permission to be as glad as it wants to be.
For the vows
“Therefore what God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.”
The line the officiant says over joined hands. It grounds the marriage in God’s action rather than the couple’s mood.
“We love, because he first loved us.”
Seven words, and the theology of the entire day. Lovely spoken just before the rings.
Carry one with you today
If you are choosing readings, pick one familiar and one unfamiliar — 1 Corinthians 13 for the room, and Ruth 1:16 or Ecclesiastes 4 for the couple. Familiarity comforts; surprise stays.