Thinking about or planning an elopement, but not sure what to do for your ceremony, or how to make it a little more special than just a few lines of scripted text? Consider adding a reading!

Even if you’re eloping just the two of you and want something super short and sweet, I encourage you to take some time and think about your ceremony—how it might flow, and what you might want to include. Elopement ceremonies are often far more intimate than big, traditional ceremonies where you might have dozens or hundreds of guests present. With the intimate space provided by an elopement, you have a chance to really slow down and take some time for yourselves, and share words with each other that you might not feel comfortable sharing in front of a crowd.

In this quiet space, you might consider sharing a moment of meditation, or sitting down for some tea, or incorporating some kind of activity like singing a song or making a painting together. Or, another great way to add another layer of meaning to your ceremony is with a reading—perhaps an excerpt from a text or a love poem!

These readings could be read aloud by either of you, or by your officiant, or if you’re inviting any guests, you could ask one of them to read.

Here are a few of my best recommendations for non-religious ceremony readings and love poems, hand-picked for adventurous, wild souls who want to elope somewhere out in the great outdoors.

“Habitation” – Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house, or even a tent

It is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back, where we squat
outdoors, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived
this far

we are learning to make fire.

Like a River – Whitney Hanson

They say that sometimes love starts with a spark,
And that might be true.
But if I were to wish you a love, I wouldn’t wish fire for you.
You see, fire is powerful. It burns bright, then it’s gone.
It’s beautiful and warm, but it doesn’t last long.
So instead of wishing you a love that burns,
I wish you love like a river that twists and turns.
It changes and flows, it is powerful and free.
But it consistently finds its way back to the sea.
And so, like the water, I hope your love is ever growing, ever changing.
I hope your love is powerful and free.
And may you always find each other like the river finds the sea.

Excerpt from “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” – 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 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. Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

“Wild Geese” – Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

“If I Had Three Lives” – Sarah Russell

After “Melbourne” by the Whitlams

If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two.
The other? Perhaps that life over there
at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing — a memoir,
maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably,
a small apartment with a view of the river,
and books — lots of books, and time to read.
Friends to laugh with, and a man sometimes,
for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like
when it’s alive. I’d be thinner in that life, vegan,
practice yoga. I’d go to art films, farmers markets,
drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry.
I’d vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt
weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat
and aftershave more than I did him. I’d walk the beach
at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks
water makes in sand. And I’d wonder sometimes
if I’d ever find you.

“i carry your heart with me” – E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

“A Moment of Happiness” – Rumi

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

“Variations on the Word Love” – Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

“Love's Philosophy” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single:
All things by a law divine
In another's being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

“Near” – Carol Ann Duffy

Far, we are near, meet in the rain
which falls here; gathered by light, air;
falls there where you are, I am; lips
to those drops now on yours, nearer …

absence of the space we yearn in, clouds
drift, cluster, east to west, north, south;
your breath in them; they pour, baptise;
same sun burning through to harvest
rainfall on skin, there, far; my mouth
opening to spell your near name.

“Love Sonnet 17” – Pablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
In secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries within itself the light of hidden flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close
as I fall asleep.

Excerpt from “Les Miserables” – 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.

“you are a poem” – Ashton Jack

I thought I knew before what it was to love
but I see now those were mere prescriptions.

I think of what time was,
before the era of you.
a life as if dormant, waiting—
not even knowing what I was waiting for, or that I was even waiting.
but here and now, I am alive,
and here you are, with me now,
alive too,
blooming.

flowers have more color, those colors richer,
words hold more meaning, those meanings deeper,
cliches carry more truths, unpretentious and earnest.

I may sound a broken record
sounding, resounding that longing, yearning
of every lovestruck fool and poet before me.

but I harbor no shame of this nature of Love,
to draw poetry from and in every breath—
to be a poet,
writing poetry.
and you, my dear, are a poem,
craving to be written,
read,
adored.

“To Love is Not to Possess” – James Kavanaugh

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.

“Our souls are mirrors” – Rupi Kaur

god must have kneaded you and i
from the same dough
rolled us out as one on the baking sheet
must have suddenly realized
how unfair it was
to put that much magic in one person
and sadly split that dough in two
how else is it that
when i look in the mirror
i am looking at you
when you breathe
my own lungs fill with air
that we just met but we
have known each other our whole lives
if we were not made as one to begin with

HEY THERE, WE’RE

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