"Whatever happens with us, your body / will haunt mine — tender, delicate / your love-making, like the half-curled frond / of the fiddlehead fern in forests / just washed by sun." — Adrienne Rich, "Twenty-One Love Poems, XI"
If you've spent more than ten minutes looking at "wedding readings" online, you've noticed: 90% of the canon assumes a bride and a groom. The remaining 10% is the same eight passages from Captain Corelli's Mandolin recycled across every wedding blog on earth.
Below are 20 readings that work at LGBTQ weddings — sorted by emotional weight, with notes on where each fits in a ceremony, how long it runs, and what kind of reader can pull it off.
Where readings go in a ceremony
Most ceremonies hold one or two readings. The placement matters:
- Early reading (after the welcome, before the declaration of intent) — sets a tone, pulls the room in, gives the officiant a beat before the heart of the ceremony.
- Mid reading (between the declaration of intent and the vows) — bridges the legal moment and the personal moment. Best for short, sharp pieces.
- Late reading (after the vows, before the ring exchange) — gives the room a breath after the high emotion of the vows. Best for quieter, slower pieces.
Three readings is too many. Two is usually one too many unless the wedding is long. One well-chosen reading beats two pretty good ones.
Short readings (under 90 seconds)
1. Adrienne Rich, "Twenty-One Love Poems, XI"
The opening lines, quoted above, are the best 30 seconds of love poetry written for two women in the 20th century. Reader: someone who can speak it without rushing. Placement: early. Brief enough to lead a ceremony without dominating it.
2. Ada Limón, "What I Didn't Know Before"
A modern poem about being knocked over by a person. Ends with one of the most quoted lines in contemporary American poetry. Reader: anyone with stage presence. Placement: anywhere; especially good as the early reading. Avoid if any other text in the ceremony is overly literary — Limón is rich, and you don't want to overstuff the meal.
3. Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"
Universal, but the line "the world offers itself to your imagination" hits with extra force when said over a queer couple — the world specifically did not always offer itself, and now it does. Reader: a quiet voice. Placement: anywhere.
4. Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where…" The classic. Old enough now to feel slightly Hallmark-y at a hetero wedding, but at an LGBTQ wedding the freshness comes back — the original Spanish doesn't gender the addressee, which is something you can mention as the officiant.
5. James Baldwin, from Giovanni's Room (selected paragraph)
"I am sure that everyone has at least once felt that he is the only one in the world who has ever loved as he loves now."
Carries weight. Reader needs to slow down. Placement: mid or late.
6. Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (selected paragraph)
Vuong's prose is liturgical. Pick any paragraph about love or recognition; the rhythm of the language does half the work. Reader: someone unhurried. Placement: mid.
7. Audre Lorde, "Movement Song" (closing stanza)
Brief, declarative, ferocious. Best read by a friend who has known the couple a long time.
Medium readings (90 seconds to 2 minutes)
8. Wendell Berry, "The Country of Marriage" (selected stanzas)
The whole poem is too long for a wedding; pick stanzas 1 and 4 (or 4 and 7). The language is universal but the imagery — "I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark" — reads beautifully at a queer wedding.
9. Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (the wedding day passage)
If you don't know the passage, read the book — it's the page describing the speaker's wedding to Harry Dodge, with all the bureaucratic comedy of getting married in California in 2008 and the deeper love underneath. It is the reading for a queer wedding that wants to be wry and tender at once.
10. Audre Lorde, "Coal" or "Power" (excerpt)
Lorde is a generous wedding reading because her work refuses to make queerness small. Pick the right excerpt for the room.
11. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, on solitude in love
"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
Slightly worn at this point from overuse, but at an LGBTQ wedding the two solitudes reading takes on new resonance — many queer relationships were formed under conditions where each partner first had to be alone in their identity before they could be together. Use if the couple has lived that story.
12. Andrea Gibson, "I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out"
Modern spoken-word, intense, queer-coded throughout. Reader needs charisma. Placement: mid. Avoid if the room is mostly grandparents.
13. Saeed Jones, prose excerpt from How We Fight for Our Lives
His writing on love and recognition is gut-punch. Pick a passage.
Long readings (2-3 minutes — use sparingly)
14. Wendell Berry, "The Country of Marriage" (full)
Three minutes if read slowly. Worth it if the couple has been together a long time. Reader: a parent or longtime friend. Not for a first-year relationship — the poem is about durability.
15. e.e. cummings, "i carry your heart with me"
Familiar to the point of cliché now, but it became cliché because it works. If you use it, lean into the asymmetric line breaks — they're what makes the poem feel like a real human voice and not a greeting card.
16. Anne Sexton, "It Is a Spring Afternoon"
Sensual, queer-readable, slightly weird. For couples who like their wedding readings to have texture.
17. Excerpt from Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
The closing chapter has passages that read like benedictions for a queer life that survived. Pick carefully — some passages are too heavy for a wedding. The right paragraph is incandescent.
Modern / unconventional choices
18. A passage from a book the couple loves and fights over who owns
The best wedding reading is from a book the couple actually reads. If they have a copy with both their notes in the margins, that's the reading. Have the friend read the passage and the couple's marginalia.
19. A letter one partner wrote to the other, read by a third person
Risky, devastating when it works. Have a friend read aloud a letter (or text exchange, or birthday card) one partner wrote to the other at some pivotal moment — the coming-out conversation, the first time one moved cities for the other, the day after a hard fight that resolved.
20. A poem written by a friend specifically for the wedding
If anyone in the room writes, ask. A handwritten poem from a friend who has known the couple for ten years lands harder than any Adrienne Rich excerpt, because it is for these two specifically.
What to skip
Some readings keep getting recycled on wedding-reading lists even though they don't actually work for LGBTQ weddings:
- 1 Corinthians 13 ("Love is patient, love is kind…") — fine if the couple is religious, but if they're not, please don't include this just because every list says to. The text reads as default-Christian and many queer couples have complicated relationships with default-Christian framings.
- "Song of Songs" excerpts — same note. Beautiful text. Don't include for default reasons.
- Anything from The Velveteen Rabbit — it's been over-used at weddings to the point that you can see the room mentally check out.
- "How Do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning — beloved by your aunt; not actually a great choice unless the couple specifically asked for it.
The point is not to be contrarian. The point is to choose a reading because it fits this couple, not because it's on a list.
How to introduce a reading
The officiant introduces the reader, briefly. Three sentences max.
"Now, [reader's name] is going to read a piece [Partner 1] chose. It's a passage from [text], and if you've ever heard [Partner 1] talk about [the book / the author / the year they discovered this], you'll know why this one matters."
That's it. Don't explain the reading. The reading explains itself.
A note for the officiants
If you're a friend who's been asked to officiate, get ordained with Church of Pride for $20 — we ordain ministers who believe love is for everyone. Then read our LGBTQ-affirming ceremony guide and choose your readings the way you'd build a setlist: a slow one, a fast one, a heavy one, a tender one. Pick one. Use it well.