Choosing the perfect vow renewal readings can be a tough task. There are plenty of wedding readings out there, but a lot of them are about the beginning of your life as a married couple and not the celebration of your love.
Our favorite vow renewal readings
These are a few of our favorite readings that we think make for perfect vow renewal readings. For this special occasion, you need something else than a newly-wed reading.
When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
W.B Yeats
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sad, “From us fled Love,
He paced upon the mountains far above,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
Marriage Needs Time to Ripen
It takes years to marry completely two hearts, even the most loving and well assorted. A happy wedlock is a falling in love. Young persons think love belongs to the brow-haired and crimson cheeked. So it does for its beginning. But the golden marriage is part of love which the bridal day knows nothing of…. Such a large and sweet fruit is marriage that is needs a long summer to ripen, and then a long winter to mellow and season it.
Theodore Parker
The Art of a Good Marriage
A good marriage must be created.
Wilfred Arlan Peterson
In the marriage, the little things are the big things…
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once each day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of value and common objectives.
It is standing together and facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating
gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is not only marrying the right person,
it is being the right partner
The Place Poem
I could open the doors and the windows
Ted Enslin
to great winds
Let everything be scattered,
like loose sheets of paper
Let tumbling take sense and proportion
from what we have put in order.
That suits us,
but it would not change anything.
You have come in,
and your entrance has been final.
You do not leave me,
nor do I leave you, beloved.
We have made this house our place,
And our shelter.
When we go out,
we will go out together.
I Promise
I promise to give you the best of myself
Dorothy Colgan
and to ask of you no more than you can give.
I promise to respect you as your own person
and to realise that your interest, desires and needs
are no less important than my own.
I promise to share with you my time and my attention
and to bring joy, strength and imagination to our relationship.
I promise to keep myself open to you,
to let you see through the windows of my world
into my innermost fears and feelings, secrets and dreams.
I promise to grow along with you,
to be willing to face changes in order to keep
our relationship alive and exciting.
I promise to love you in good times and in bad,
with all I have to give and all I feel inside
in the only way I know how – completely and forever.