Love

8 Short, Beautiful Wedding Love Poems For When Two Become One

So, you're getting married? Mazel tov! It's time to pick a dress, get the hall, and plan what you're going to say to your bride or groom.

Of course, writing your vows can be the hard part. It can be easy to list everything you love most about your significant other, but truly being able to find the right words that say what you mean and sounds beautiful once you're finally on the altar can feel almost impossible.

That's where we come in. We've selected eight special short wedding poems for you and your sweetie to read to each other during your vows, at the reception, or even on your wedding night.

Wherever you choose to share these poems with your sweetheart, he'll love them because they'll come from you.

Love poems are the perfect way to connect with the love of your life with words that are just as meaningful when they were written as they are now. And these eight short wedding poems are the best of the best for you and the one you love. Instead of scouring the Internet for something that kind of sums up what you've been trying to say all your life, these love poems for your wedding will do your ceremony justice.

It might be hard to choose your favorite one, which is why you should (obviously) have a few to share throughout the ceremony and reception. And in our personal opinion? Save your first choice for the wedding night when it's just the two of you; it'll be that much more special.

1. "How Do I Love Thee?"

"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 an 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 grief's, 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."

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning


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2. "Love Song"

"There is a strong wall about me to protect me:

It is built of the words you have said to me.

There are swords about me to keep me safe:

They are the kisses of your lips.

Before me goes a shield to guard me from harm:

It is the shadow of your arms between me and danger.

All the wishes of my mind know your name,

And the white desires of my heart

They are acquainted with you.

The cry of my body for completeness,

That is a cry to you.

My blood beats out your name to me,

unceasing, pitiless

Your name, your name."

— Mary Carolyn Davies

3. "One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII​"

"I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,  

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:  

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,  

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries  

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,  

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose  

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,  

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,  

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,  

so close that your eyes close with my dreams."

— Pablo Neruda

4. "Pathways"

"Understand, I'll slip quietly

Away from the noisy crowd

When I see the pale

Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.

I'll pursue solitary pathways

Through the pale twilit meadows,

With only this one dream:

You come too."

— Rainer Maria Rilke

5. "To Love is Not to Possess"

"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."

— James Kavanaugh


RELATED: 10 Poems That Just GET What Love Feels Like (The Good AND The Bad)


6. "To Be One With Each Other"

"What greater thing is there for two human souls

than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen

each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,

to share with each other in all gladness,

to be one with each other in the

silent unspoken memories?"

— George Eliot

7. "When I Am With You"

"When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!

And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute

of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain, both. We are

the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute, so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones."

— Rumi

8. "The Life That I Have"

"The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours."

— Leo Marks


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