Top creative tips to offer inspiration when choosing wedding readings, whether it is for barefoot nuptials on a foreign beach or a winter church wedding by candle light.

Readings can be used not only to personalise a wedding, but to echo the time of year, to create a sense of place and to enrich the dramatic element of the theme.

Scottish Wedding in June

• Many people with Scottish ancestry choose to have bagpipes, kilts and tartan sashes. This could be taken a step further by including a reading such as My Luve, (O my luve is like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June) by Scotsman, Robert Burns. It is the perfect romantic poem, especially for a June wedding. The reader, ideally Scottish, could carry two red roses which would be presented to the bride and groom after the reading.

Fairytale Spring Wedding

• "Come live with me and be my love" is the first line of Christopher Marlowe's much loved romantic poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. It's easy to imagine the bride with a garland of spring flowers on her head, trailing ribbons down her back.
• Another possibility is A Bride Named Spring by Josie Whitehead, which describes the season as a bride and talks of the wedding day and frosted hills as being the icing and the wedding cake.

Summer Wedding Breakfast in an Orchard

• For summer ceremonies in the northern hemisphere, there is a wedding poem from a collection called The October Palace by Jane Hirschfield, For a Wedding on Mt.Tamalpais, that creates a sense of abundance, with a touch of Adam and Eve. The first few lines are :

July,

and the rich apples

once again falling.

You put them to your lips,

as you were meant to.......

• Picture a small group of people, a low outdoor altar decorated with fruit and flowers and the guests relaxing against cushions on picnic rugs. After the ceremony, picnic hampers are opened to reveal wine, smoked salmon, crusty bread and fruit.

Autumn/ Fall Wedding Under Trees

• Another romantic poem but this one is for an autumn wedding. Rich golden colours could be used to continue the theme. Oliver Jenkins writes Love Autumnal which includes the lines :

Then, we shall walk through dusty lanes

And pause beneath low-hanging boughs,

And there, while soft-hued beauty reigns

We’ll make our vows

Church Wedding in Winter

• Winter Wedding, by Robert Harrison would brighten the dullest morning and would suit a traditional church setting, whereas a winter afternoon candle-lit ceremony could create a medieval feel.

When using a longer reading, to make it more interesting, consider splitting it up so that two or more people read. That will keep it lively and interesting.

Beach Wedding

• In the little book, Gifts from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh describes relationships as islands, "visited and abandoned by the tides". She talks beautifully about the ebb and flow of life and love. There are many passages which would make ideal beach readings.

More wedding reading ideas, Wedding Readings for Children, Contemporary Wedding Music, Classical Wedding Music

The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Geddes and Grosset 2002)

The October Palace (Jane Hirschfield New York Harper Perennial 1994)

The Passionate Shepherd is in 100 Favourite Poems (Hodder and Stoughton 1997)

Love Autumnal (Oliver Jenkins. Anthology of Massachusetts Poets edited by William Stanley Braithwaite 1922)

Gifts from the Sea (Anne Morrow Lindbergh Chatto and Windus Ltd 1992)