Best Wedding Poems: Sweet, Romantic & Emotional Verses

Looking to recite a poem to say during your wedding procession? Look at a few top picks for reference. Choose your style with loving, thoughtful pieces.

Trying to surprise your partner during the wedding ceremony readings? A heartfelt speech is a solid choice, and you have probably worked hard on it for a week. But then you will feel awkward if it is too long, and conveying your feelings in a concise, brief paragraph is as bad as it sounds. 

You can instead choose to go for poetry. A well-written poem will convey and invoke multiple emotions while being short and leaving you a bit of room to say a few words along with it. 

Now, there are three things you can do: you can do the lazy thing and just recite a poem you found on the internet. You can try to write a poem yourself without any help, which, although commendable, will be extremely hard to do. Or you can work smart and take a little bit of reference from some remarkable pieces by distinguished authors. 

We have selected some of the sweetest poems (there was a poll) we could find for you to take a look. You can pick the one that resonates with you the most to recite, or you could take a few lines from multiple pieces and even write a few of your own along with it if you want to. Your partner deserves that effort. 

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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 candle-light.

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 griefs, 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.

Also Read: How to Write Wedding Vows That Truly Touch the Heart

Happy In Love — Shelagh Bullman

“How happy I am to be in love with you.

I want to scream from my lungs till I’m breathless and blue.

I want the world to know how excited I am

To be in love with this gorgeous, perfect man.

How lucky I am; I feel crazy inside.

I’m riding the big roller coaster of pride.

My mind bombarded with thoughts of you.

Is this the beginning of something new?

How creative I am when it comes to romance,

But you are my music, and I want to dance.

I arouse to your passion; you spice up my desires.

Each pulse in my body burns through me like fires.

How smitten I am with those eyes of green

That run through my heart like the deepest ravine.

And what of your smile, makes me weak at the knees,

Sweeps me off my feet like a powerful breeze.”

A Red, Red Rose —  Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

   That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

   So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

   And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

To My Dear and Loving Husband — Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Also Read: Modern Wedding Vows Ideas That Will Melt Your Heart

To Love is Not to Possess — James Kavanaugh

To love is not to possess,

To own or imprison,

Nor to lose one’s self in another.

Love is to join and separate,

To walk alone and together,

To find a laughing freedom

That lonely isolation does not permit.

It is finally to be able

To be who we really are

No longer clinging in childish dependency

Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,

It is to be perfectly one’s self

And perfectly joined in permanent commitment

To another–and to one’s inner self.

Love only endures when it moves like waves,

Receding and returning gently or passionately,

Or moving lovingly like the tide

In the moon’s own predictable harmony,

Because finally, despite a child’s scars

Or an adult’s deepest wounds,

They are openly free to be

Who they really are–and always secretly were,

In the very core of their being

Where true and lasting love can alone abide.

She Walks in Beauty — Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Also Read: Songs for a Proposal Your Partner Will Always Remember

Mad Girl’s Love Song — Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Unending Love — Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,

Its ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Conclusion

These are some poems that we think capture the raw emotion of love very well. The different stages and challenges, the sense of completion when your partner stands beside you; the poems are an amalgamation of many feelings. Take a few lines from the one you like the most, and you are nearly set for the surprise.