From Rumi

From Rumi:

Let yourself be silently drawn

 by the stronger pull

of what you really love.

You are a gift to one another

From one of my ceremonies: 

You are a gift to one another. You are asked to love one another and in that love you both my find yourselves--strong and beautiful--that the entire world might be blessed by your presence.

Vow Renewal with Child

Vow Renewal with Child:

_____ and ____, you are here today in this beautiful place to express your love for one another in the presence of your dearest friends and family. You have a relationship already blessed with  joy and love, no more evidence required than the presence of sweetest Baby S____, and also tested by trials and challenges that life brings... Those challenges are nothing more than lessons shared for the purpose of growth. Shared growth with a common purpose…

Ring Blessing

RING BLESSING 

 Circles have no beginning and have no end, and so in the long and sacred tradition of marriage, rings have come to symbolize eternal love and endless union of body, of mind, and of the spirit.

Cherokee Blessing

 Another reading for a ceremony:

Cherokee Blessing

God in heaven above please protect the ones we love. We honor all you created as we pledge our hearts and lives together. We honor Mother Earth and ask for our marriage to be abundant and grow stronger through the seasons. We honor fire and ask that our union be warm and glowing with love in our hearts. We honor wind and ask that we sail through life safe and calm as in our father's arms. We honor water to clean and soothe our relationship -- that it may never thirst for love. With all the forces of the universe you created, we pray for harmony as we grow forever young together.

Apache Wedding Blessing

A popular reading for ceremonies:
Apache Wedding Blessing

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your life together. May your days be good and long upon the earth. May the blessings of the Great Spirit, be with you to guide you this day and forevermore....

Thoughts on Marriage

A couple included this in a ceremony:

Here are some thoughts on marriage from

Robert Heinlen:

Why is it that marriage, by whatever name, is a universal institution among human beings everywhere? Don’t ask a theologian, don’t ask a lawyer; this institution existed long before it was codified by church or state.

Marriage is as much a part of mankind’s evolutionary equipment as his eyes, and as useful to the race as eyes are to an individual. It works, that’s all: for all its faults it works far better by the only universal test—survival—than any of the endless inventions that fools over the millennia have tried to substitute for it.

Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone to hold your hand—these things are marriage, and it gives deep happiness to those who share it.