Which readings suit your ceremony?

Readings are the only minutes of a ceremony when someone other than the couple and the officiant holds the room. They give the running order air, they involve people who would otherwise only watch, and they are often remembered longer than the main address.

What follows covers the kinds of text available, a rule of thumb for length, who should read, a way of shortlisting by mood, and the unglamorous part about copyright. Where readings sit in the running order is shown under the structure of a wedding ceremony.

Practically everything read at weddings falls into one of these groups, and each does something different to a room.

• Scripture. The traditional route, and not only in church. The passage on love from the first letter to the Corinthians, the loyalty verses from the Book of Ruth and lines from the Song of Songs are the ones most often chosen. They carry formality, and many guests will recognise them.
• Poetry. Compact, memorable and unforgiving in delivery: a poem does not survive stumbling. Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti and W. B. Yeats are all long out of copyright; check that the language still carries rather than sounding like a museum piece.
• Prose. An extract from a novel or an essay. It feels contemporary and conversational, but it needs one sentence of context first, or half the room spends the reading wondering who these people are.
• Song lyrics, spoken. Tempting when a song matters to you. Stripped of the melody, lyrics often sound thinner than expected — read yours aloud once before you commit.
• Something written for the day. A letter from a parent, a few sentences from a friend, a couple of lines from the children. The most personal option, and the only one with no copyright question attached.

Your vows are not a reading. They come out of a conversation between the two of you rather than off a page of options; how couples keep them afterwards is covered under vow books as a keepsake.

Quantity is where most ceremonies go wrong. Four readings look generous on paper and feel heavy in the room, because each one carries a changeover, a walk and a pause on either side. One or two is the working number; three is the ceiling, and only for longer ceremonies with music between them.

For length, reckon on about 130 words a minute. That is slower than ordinary speech, and it is the right pace for a room with an echo, for a nervous reader and for guests hearing the words for the first time.

Count the words in your chosen text before deciding — any word processor shows the figure. An over-long prose extract can nearly always be trimmed to its strongest passage without losing anything; cut first the sentences that repeat an idea already made.

Add the frame as well. Announcing the reader, standing up, walking forward and sitting down again costs another 30 to 60 seconds per reading. Two readings of two minutes each therefore occupy nearer six minutes of the running order than four — which is exactly where ceremonies quietly slip behind schedule.

A reading is an honour and also a job. Ask people who can speak in front of a room, or at least do not dread it — not someone who has no other role and therefore needs one. Make it easy to decline: say when you ask that no is a complete answer.

Five minutes of preparation on your side makes an enormous difference to theirs:

• send the text at least four weeks ahead, with the length and the point in the running order
• provide a printed copy in large type, 14 point or more, with no page break mid-sentence
• say exactly where they stand, whether there is a microphone and who hands it over
• ask them to practise aloud twice, not silently
• name a stand-in in case their voice goes on the day

If a child is reading, cut the text to a few lines and put an adult beside them. With two readings, contrast helps: one person from each side of the family, one serious text and one lighter one. A good officiant links the readings into the ceremony so there is no gap between them, which is part of what the script does — see the shape of a celebrant script. Keeping the running order and the arrival times in one place, for instance on a wedding website, spares your readers from chasing details by message.

Working through lists of famous readings is slow. Deciding on the effect you want first, and only then looking for texts, is much faster.

Church weddings narrow the choice deliberately: the readings come from an approved lectionary, and anything additional is agreed with the minister beforehand. The running order is set out under the church wedding order of service. A celebrant-led ceremony leaves you free, though not unlimited — two texts that say the same thing cancel each other out.

In the United Kingdom, copyright in a literary work lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the author died. Until then the text is protected, and that includes song lyrics on their own, separately from the music. Germany applies the same 70-year term; other countries, the United States in particular, calculate it differently. For your ceremony this splits into two very different situations.

Reading aloud to invited guests is not a problem. A wedding among family and friends is a private gathering rather than a public performance, so having a contemporary novel, a modern poem or a set of lyrics read out is fine. Writers who are still in copyright — Louis de Bernières, Maya Angelou, Pablo Neruda, e. e. cummings among the often-chosen ones — can all be read.

Printing the text in your order of service is a different act: that is reproduction, and the more copies you print and hand out, the less any private-use argument holds. If you want to be safe, print the title and the author only and let the text be heard rather than read. With out-of-copyright writers the question does not arise at all. Publishers do license short reproductions, but for one wedding it is rarely worth the correspondence.

That leaves the rehearsal. Read every text aloud once, standing, with a stopwatch. It exposes three things at once: the real duration, the places where the tongue trips, and whether the last line lands. Rehearse in the room itself if you can, because distance and acoustics change everything. Then settle what the music does between the readings, which is covered under music for the ceremony.