21 Beautiful And Unique Wedding Readings From Books

Because not everyone wants to use the verse from Corinthians.

1. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

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"It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and - I won't pretend to deny - brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can't think of anything better."

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2. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

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"Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches... I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids…

I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I...

I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said, 'Farm Boy, do this', you thought I was answering, 'As you wish', but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard."

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3. The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach

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"A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life."

Get the book here.

4. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

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"What I'm feeling, I think, is joy. And it's been some time since I've felt that blinkered rush of happiness. This might be one of those rare events that lasts, one that'll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. 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 have to live to understand. 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 through your body like an enormous firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and everything makes sense. And it becomes one of those things inside you, a pearl among sludge, one of those big exaggerated memories you can invoke at any moment to peel away a little layer of how you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavour of grace."

Get the book here.

5. I Like You by Sandol Stoddard

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"I like you and I know why.

I like you because you are a good person to like.

I like you because when I tell you something special, you know it's special

And you remember it a long, long time.

You say, 'Remember when you told me something special?'

And both of us remember

When I think something is important

you think it's important too

We have good ideas

When I say something funny, you laugh

I think I'm funny and you think I'm funny too

Hah-hah!

...And I like you because when I am feeling sad

You don't always cheer me up right away

Sometimes it is better to be sad...

I like you because if I am mad at you

Then you are mad at me too

It's awful when the other person isn't...

I like you because I don't know why but

Everything that happens is nicer with you

I can't remember when I didn't like you

It must have been lonesome then

I like you because because because

I forget why I like you but I do."

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6. Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver

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"If you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light.

But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic."

Get the book here.

7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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"I have for the first time found what I can truly love - I have found you. You are my sympathy - my better self - my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you - and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one."

Get the free e-book here.

8. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

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"I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough."

Get the book here.

9. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labour has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."

Get the book here.

10. "Us Two" from Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne

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"Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

Whatever I do, he wants to do,

'Where are you going today?' says Pooh:

'Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.

Let's go together,' says Pooh, says he.

'Let's go together,' says Pooh...

'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh.

'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me.

We crossed the river and found a few-

'Yes, those are dragons all right,' said Pooh.

'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.

That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what they are,' said Pooh.

'Let's frighten the dragons,' I said to Pooh.

'That's right,' said Pooh to Me.

'I'm not afraid,' I said to Pooh,

And I held his paw and I shouted 'Shoo!

Silly old dragons!' - and off they flew.

'I wasn't afraid,' said Pooh, said he,

'I'm never afraid with you.'

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

'What would I do?' I said to Pooh,

'If it wasn't for you,' and Pooh said: 'True,

It isn't much fun for One, but Two,

Can stick together,' says Pooh, says he. 'That's how it is,' says Pooh."

See the full poem here.

11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

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"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it."

Get the free e-book here.

12. Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

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"If my like for you was a football crowd, you'd be deaf 'cause of the roar. And if my like for you was a boxer, there'd be a dead guy lying on the floor. And if my like for you was sugar, you'd lose your teeth before you were twenty. And if my like for you was money, let's just say you'd be spending plenty."

Get the book here.

13. Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery

"It was a happy and beautiful bride who came down the old, homespun-carpeted stairs that September noon - the first bride of Green Gables, slender and shining-eyed, in the mist of her maiden veil, with her arms full of roses. Gilbert, waiting for her in the hall below, looked up at her with adoring eyes. She was his at last, this evasive, long-sought Anne, won after years of patient waiting. It was to him she was coming in the sweet surrender of the bride. Was he worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as he hoped? If he failed her - if he could not measure up to her standard of manhood - then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad certainty. They belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might hold for them, it could never alter that. Their happiness was in each other's keeping and both were unafraid."

Get the free e-book here.

14. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

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"People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object hidden under a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable."

Get the book here.

15. Evelina by Frances Burney

"I revere you. I esteem and admire you above all human beings. You are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half. You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women. And you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling... You are now all my own... How will my soul find room for its happiness? It seems already bursting!"

Get the free e-book here.

16. Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith

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"People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn't know were there, even the ones they wouldn't have thought to call beautiful themselves."

Get the book here.

17. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

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"You were the one who taught me... I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation...

I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me... I love whom I love."

Get the book here.

18. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta

"'This hand says you spend the rest of your life with me,' he said, holding out his left hand, 'and this one says I spend the rest of my life with you. Choose.'

She bit her lip, tears welling in her eyes. She took both of his hands in hers and he shuddered. 'I will die protecting you,' he said.

There was a look of dismay on her face... 'I will die for you,' he whispered.

She cupped his face in her hands. 'But promise me you'll live first. Because nothing we are about to do is going to be easy and I need you by my side.'"

Get the book here.

19. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

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"Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the 'blaze of passion' often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did."

Get the book here.

20. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

"Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being 'in love', which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."

Get the book here.

21. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

"The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.

Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven...

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct."

Get the free e-book here.

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