I know that love can be loud and jubilant…It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look loveable just by dint of being loved by them.

It’s laughing until you wheeze.

It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.

It’s skinny-dipping at dawn. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.

It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.

I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.

It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.

It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine.

It’s saying ‘You’re safer here than in a car’ as they hyperventilate on an EasyJet flight to Dublin.

It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’.

I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.

Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.

You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way.

All of those conversations that were held in the car, or over a drink, or during walks—all those conversations that began with, ‘When we’re married,’ and continued with ‘I will’ and ‘you will’ and ‘we will’—all those talks that included ‘someday’ and ‘somehow’ and ‘maybe’—and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart.

All these common things, and more, are the real process of a marriage. The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to eachother, ‘You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed—well, I meant it all, every word.'”

Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – gym go’ers, country music singers, morning walk buddies, best friend, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned so much from one another these past 6 years. Shortly you’ll say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same. For after today you’ll say to the world—This is my husband. This is my wife.”

Now you will feel no rain,

for each of you will be shelter for the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

for each of you will be warmth for the other.

Now there is no more loneliness.

Now you are two persons,

but there is only one life before you.

May your days together be good and long

upon the earth.

When the one whose hand you’re holding

Is the one who holds your heart

When the one whose eyes you gaze into

Gives your hopes and dreams their start,

When the one you think of first and last

Is the one who holds you tight,

And the things you plan together

Make the whole world seem just right,

When the one whom you believe in

puts their faith and trust in you,

You’ve found the one and only love

You’ll share your whole life through.

If – Larry S Chengges

If you can always be as close

And as happy as today

Yet be secure enough to grow

And change along the way

If you can keep for you alone

Your love as man and wife

Yet find the time to share your joy

With others in your life

If you can be as one

And walk through marriage hand in hand,

Yet still support the goals and dreams

That each of you had planned

If you can dare to always go

Your separate ways together

Then all the wonder of today

Will stay with you forever.

You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Yes, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness.

And let the winds of heaven dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love.

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but each one of you be

alone – even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not in each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the Cyprus grow not in each other’s shadows

The little things are the big things. It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.

It is at no time taking the other for granted;

the courtship should not end with the honeymoon,

it should continue through all the years.

It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating

gratitude in thoughtful ways.

It is not expecting the husband to wear a halo or the wife to have wings of an angel.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humor.

It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.

It is finding room for the things of the spirit.

It is a common search for the good and the beautiful. It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

Love is a mighty power,

a great and complete good.

Love alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.

It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders

all bitterness sweet and acceptable.

Nothing is sweeter than love,

Nothing stronger,

Nothing higher,

Nothing wider,

Nothing more pleasant,

Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God.

Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.

It is free and unrestrained.

Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.

Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,

attempts things beyond its strength.

Love sees nothing as impossible,

for it feels able to achieve all things.

It is strange and effective,

while those who lack love faint and fail.

Love is not fickle and sentimental,

nor is it intent on vanities.

Like a living flame and a burning torch,

it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.

Marriage is about giving and taking

And forging and forsaking

Kissing and loving and pushing and shoving

Caring and sharing and screaming and swearing

About being together whatever the weather

About being driven to the end of your tether

About sweetness and kindness

And wisdom and blindness

It’s about being strong when you’re feeling quite weak

It’s about saying nothing when you’re dying to speak

It’s about being wrong when you know you are right

It’s about giving in, before there’s a fight

It’s about you two living as cheaply as one

(you can give us a call if you know how that’s done!)

Never heeding advice that was always well meant

Never counting the cost until it’s all spent

And for you two today it’s about to begin

And for all that the two of you had to put in

Some days filled with joy, and some days with sadness

Too late you’ll discover that marriage is madness.

My whole heart. Will be yours forever. This is a beautiful start, To a lifelong love letter

Tell the world that we finally got it all right. I choose you. I will become yours and you will become mine…

We are not perfect we’ll learn from our mistakes, And as long as it takes I will prove my love to you. I am not scared of the elements I am underprepared, But I am willing. And even better I get to be the other half of you.

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 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.

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.

He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. H

e isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give.

Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there.

Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.

Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always. A promise.

Like a reward for persisting through life so long alone.

A belief in each other and the possibility of love.

A decision to ignore, simply rose above the pain of the past.

A covenant, which at once binds two souls and yet severs prior ties.

A celebration of the chance taken and the challenge that lies ahead.

For two will always be stronger than one, like a team braces against the tempest civil world.

And love will always be the guiding force in our lives.

For tonight is a mere formality.

Only an announcement to the world of feelings long held,

Promises made long ago,

In the sacred spaces of our hearts.’