I have been collecting wedding quotes since I was an angsty teen—scrawled in my various notebooks alongside my angsty (and terrible, but you knew that) teen poetry. I mean, I suppose at the time I just thought of them as “mushy quotes about love,” but now that I’m a wedding designer, I realize that I’ve been collecting wedding quotes all along. And lucky for you all, my taste in literature has always been pretty consistent, and my taste in poetry has improved immensely over the years. Mostly because I stopped trying to write it. Of course, given that weddings are now my job, my crush on good love quotes abides, and I think your wedding is a fantastic place to splash around your own love of the written word with quotes that speak to the truths of marriage. (But only good wedding quotes, of course.)
Bonus: It’s like showing off your top-shelf books (Infinite Jest anyone?).
Also in Advice
So while it might seem impossible to sum up your ridiculously amazing, complicated, and fantastic wedding in a neat little sentence (heck, that’s what marriage is for—you get a lifetime to figure it out), here’s a list of some great wedding quotes to get you started. I’ve divided them up by length, as well as breaking the more literary quotes out from the pop-culture quotes.
And then, for bonus points, I’ve given you design ideas for how you can use these quotes during your wedding.
Very Short Wedding Quotes
These are perfect for signs, napkins, banners, and backdrops.
Literary Quotes
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. —J.M. Barrie
The only magic I still believe in is love. —Unknown
If I know what love is, it is because of you. —Hermann Hesse
Who, being loved, is poor? —Oscar Wilde
I have found the one whom my soul loves. —Song of Solomon
Pop Culture Quotes
You make me feel like I am home again. —The Cure, “Lovesong”
A party without cake is just a meeting. —Julia Child
Can I get a witness? —Marvin Gaye
You give good love. —Whitney Houston
I walk the line. —Johnny Cash
No parking on the dance floor. —Midnight Star
Slightly Longer True Love Quotes
These are perfect for programs, favors, invitations, and vows.
Literary Quotes
They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. —F. Scott Fitzgerald
You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known and even that is an understatement. —F. Scott Fitzgerald
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary? —J.M. Barrie
Being in love is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone. —Zelda Fitzgerald
Laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters. —Tom Robbins
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms. —Mary Oliver
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through… You won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. —Haruki Murakami
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. —Nicole Krauss
Pop Culture Quotes
With a love like that, you know you should be glad. —The Beatles, “She Loves You”
I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure that I’m arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone. —The Hobbit (Movie)
Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi’s life. So you might say, that we are encouraged to love. —Star Wars: Episode II
She is the only evidence of God I have seen with the exception of the mysterious force that removes one sock from the dryer every time I do my laundry. —St. Elmo’s Fire
Since the invention of the kiss, there have been only five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. —The Princess Bride
And we’ll collect the moments one by one, I guess that’s how the future’s done. —Feist, “Mushaboom”
The sweetest thing I ever saw, was you asleep and dreaming. —Magnetic Fields, “Asleep and Dreaming”
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool. —Almost Famous
That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence. —Pulp Fiction
Yes, I’m drunk. And you’re beautiful. And tomorrow morning, I’ll be sober but you’ll still be beautiful. —The Dreamers
We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life mean? But, in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all the time, every day. —Shall We Dance
THE BIG GUNS
These wedding quotes are perfect for vows, readings, and badass backdrops.
Literary Quotes
For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love. —Nicole Krauss
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 in their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did. —Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free. —Tom Robbins
When two people meet and fall in love, there’s a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it’s usually too late, we’ve used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It’s hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay. —Tom Robbins
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate. —Oscar Wilde
Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take… If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation… It takes a lifetime to learn another person… When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. —Madeleine L’Engle
“Finnick!” Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A lovely if somewhat bedraggled young woman—dark tangled hair, sea green eyes—runs toward us in nothing but a sheet. “Finnick!” And suddenly, it’s as if there’s no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible. A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could doubt their love. —Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love. —John Muir, “Mountain Thoughts”
We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love. —Robert Fulghum, True Love
Pop Culture Quotes
I love that you get cold when it’s seventy-one degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
—When Harry Met Sally
Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you. The right person is still going to think the sun shines out of your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth sticking with.
—Juno
Good luck finding somebody to put up with your shit for more than, like, six months. Okay? But I accept the whole package, the crazy and the brilliant. Alright? I know you’re not gonna change and I don’t want you to. It’s called accepting you for being you.
—Before Midnight
Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice, it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs and get in my bed.
—Moonstruck
In the darkest night hour,
I’ll search through the crowd.
Your face is all that I see,
I’ll give you everything.
Baby love me lights out.
—Beyoncé, “XO”
Now is a good time to mention that my love for true love quotes and my mantra as a wedding designer are very much aligned. In the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Aka be a ruthless editor. Aka be a #lazygirl. Someone already said it perfectly. That’s the beauty of good wedding quotes: they hit you somewhere right between the heart and the stomach, and just seems so obvious, so true, and so you. Even the mundane seems spectacular in a good quote. And I know none of y’all are having a mundane wedding. So when you find the perfect quote—be it a heavy hitter or a joyful (or sassy, or funny, or smart) little reminder—throw that shit around like confetti. Just remember, a little goes a long way!
Programs, menus, and vows are obvious (and legitimate) places to use a quote or two.
Eleven Ways to use wedding quotes in decorations
1. Use glittery welcome signs.
2. Make a big statement with vinyl.
3. Create an aisle backdrop with book pages and vinyl lettering.
4. Follow your quote up the aisle.
5. Say it with letter balloons.
6. Or say it with balloons and vinyl lettering.
7. Make a welcome sign that tells it like it is.
9. Give out tote bags with attitude.
10. Display flags with metallic fringe? Yes please.
What are your favorite wedding quotes, and how did you incorporate them into your wedding?
This post Contains Excerpts of two posts that were published on APW in 2015.
