ART OF MARRIAGE
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 having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is doing things for each other,
Not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice,
But in the spirit of joy.

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.

SÍOCHÁIN - Úna O Boyle
You've awoken the sleeping me
The dormant part inside
The peace that lovers only discover
That makes me glow like butterflies

The beam of the soul’s breathing glances
Evenings quiet colours unfold
Twinkling down in a wistful embrace
With you I tasted the first kiss of love.

When all our dreams have been revealed
And years fly by like the wings of a dove
The dearest thought shall be enough
The sweetest dance the first kiss of love.

You make me glow like butterflies.
With you I tasted the first kiss of love
The sweetest dance the first kiss of love.

WITH GOD AS YOUR PARTNER - Helen Steiner Rice
It takes a groom, It takes a bride
Two people standing side by side
It takes a ring and vows that say
This is our happy wedding day...
But marriage vows are sanctified
And loving hearts are unified
When standing with the bride and groom
Unseen by others in the room
The "Spirit of the Lord" is there
To bless this happy bridal pair..
For "God is love" and married life
Is richer for both man and wife
When God becomes a partner too
In everything they plan to do
And every home is specially blest
When God is made a "daily guest"
For married folks who pray together
Are happy folks who stay together..
For when God's love becomes a part
Of body, mind, soul and heart,
Their love becomes a wondrous blending
That's bother eternal and unending
And God looks down and says "well done"
For now you two are truly one.

MARRIAGE
Marriage is a promise of companionship
Of having someone to share
All of life’s experiences.
Marriage does not promise that there
Will not be any rough times,
Just the assurance that there will always be someone
Who cares and will help you through to better times.
Marriage does not promise eternal romance,
Just eternal love and commitment.
Marriage cannot prevent disappointments,
Disillusionment, or grief,
But it can offer hope, acceptance, and comfort

Marriage cannot protect you from making individual choices,
Or shelter you from the world.
But it will help to reassure you
That there is someone by your side who truly cares.
When the world hurts you
And makes you feel vulnerable,
Marriage offers the promise that there will be someone
Waiting to listen, to console, to inspire.
Marriage is the joining of two people
Who share the same promise
To share the sunshine and the shadows
And to experience a richer, and more fulfilling life
Because of it.

APACHE BLESSING
Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be the shelter for each other
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be the warmth for each other
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life ahead
Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your life together
And may your days be good and long upon the earth

Treat yourselves and each other with respect,
And remind yourselves often of what brought you together
Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness and kindness that your connection deserves
When frustration, difficulty and fear assail your relationship – as they threaten all relationships at one time or another – remember to focus on what is right between you, not only on the part which seems wrong
In this way, you can ride out storms when clouds hide the face of the sun in your lives – remembering that even if you lose sight of it for a moment, the sun is still there.
And if each of you takes responsibility for the quality of your life together, it will be marked by abundance and delight.

TRUE LOVE
True love is a sacred flame
That burns eternally,
And none can dim its special glow
Or change its destiny.
True love speaks in tender tones
And hears with gentle ear,
True love gives with open heart
And true love conquers fear.
True love makes no harsh demands
It neither rules nor binds,
And true love holds with gentle hands
The hearts that it entwines.

LOVE IS... - Andrea Hill
More beautiful than roses
Much deeper than the seas
Stronger than a hurricane
But timid like a breeze

Real as in a picture
But yet it can't be seen
More beautiful than anything
As vivid as a dream

Precious as rare jewels
A bond between two hearts
A symphony of feelings
When time is spent apart

Sharing common interests
Working through all fears
Looking at yourself
As if two were in the mirror

Finding common ground
On issues not agreed
Giving into arguments
Tending all your needs

Being there for always
Is all I want to do
Holding you forever
Because our love is true

A GIFT FROM THE SEA- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
One recognizes the truth of Saint Exupery's line: Love does not consist in gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction. For in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they are working outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base....Here one makes oneself part of the community of men, of human society. Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too, a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.

MARRIAGE IS LOVE - Gloria Matthew
If two are caring as they are sharing life's hopes and fears.
If the music of laughter outweighs sadness and tears.
Marriage is togetherness.
If both derive pleasure from the mere presence of each other, yet when parted no jealousies restrict, worry or smother.
Marriage is freedom.
If achievements mean more when they benefit two and consideration is shown with each point of view.
Marriage is respect.
And if togetherness, freedom and respect are combined with a joy that words can never fully define, then marriage is love.

MARRIAGE IS A PROMISE OF LOVE - Edmund O'Neill
Marriage is a commitment to life - to the best that two people can find and bring out in each other. It offers opportunities for sharing and growth no other human relationship can equal, a physical and emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime.
Within the circle of its love, marriage encompasses all of life's most important relationships. A wife and a husband are each other's best friend, confidant, lover, teacher, listener, and critic. There may come times when one partner is heartbroken or ailing, and the love of the other may resemble the tender caring of a parent for a child.
Marriage deepens and enriches every facet of life. Happiness is fuller; memories are fresher; commitment is stronger; even anger is felt more strongly, and passes away more quickly.
Marriage understands and forgives the mistakes life is unable to avoid. It encourages and nurtures new life, new experiences, and new ways of expressing love through the seasons of life.
When two people pledge to love and care for each other in marriage, they create a spirit unique to themselves, which binds them closer than any spoken or written words. Marriage is a promise, a potential, made in the hearts of two people who love, which takes a lifetime to fulfil.

from MARRIAGE IS ONE LONG CONVERSATION - Robert Louis Stevenson
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes…. But in the intervals, almost unconsciously, and with no desire to shine, the whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they conduct each other into new worlds of thought.

FROM THE PROPHET - Kahlil Gibran
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

FROM THE ODYSSEY - Homer
There is nothing nobler or more admirable
Than when two people who see eye to eye
Keep house as man and wife, confounding
Their enemies and delighting their friends.

THE MOST WONDERFUL OF ALL THINGS IN LIFE - Sir Hugh Walpole
The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvellous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.

On Marriage - Kahlil Gibran
Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens 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 let 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 into 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 cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

BLESSING FOR A MERRIAGE - James Dillet Freeman
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness. A mountain needs a valley to be complete; the valley does not make the mountain less, but more; and the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over it. So let it be with you and you.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice one another, but not compel one another.
May you embrace one another, but not out encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.

If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.

May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's presence - no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by side, and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities.
May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it loving one another!

TO KEEP YOUR MARRIAGE BURNING - Ogden Nash
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it;
Whenever you're right shut up.

CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN - Louis de Bernieres
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.
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.

Marriage - Margaret A. Keip
Marriage has certain qualities of contract, in which two people take on the housekeeping tasks of living, together, to enhance life's joy. However, marriage is more than a contract. Marriage is commitment to take that joy deep, deeper than happiness, deep into the discovery of who you most truly are. It is a commitment to a spiritual journey, to a life of becoming-in which joy can comprehend despair, running through rivers of pain into joy again.
And thus marriage is even deeper than commitment. It is a covenant -- a covenant that says:
I love you.
I trust you.
I will be here for you when you are hurting, and when I am hurting, I will not leave.
It is a covenant intended not to provide haven from pain or from anger and sorrow. Life offers no such haven. Instead, marriage is intended to provide a sanctuary safe enough to risk loving, to risk living and sharing from the center of oneself. This is worth everything.

EXCERPT FROM "A SONG FOR HIAWATHA"
Come join us in celebration, those who love sunshine on meadow
Who love shadow of the forest,
love the wind among the branches and the palacades of pine trees,
and the thunder in the mountains whose innumerable echoes flap like eagles in their eries.
Listen to this song of marriage. How, from another tribe and country came a young man, “give me as my wife this maiden, and our hands be clasped more closely, and our hearts be more united.
Thus it is, our daughters leave us, those we love and those who love us. When a youth with flaunting feathers beckons to the fairest maiden.
From the sky the sun benignant looked upon them through the branches, Saying to them, “oh, my children life is checkered shade and sunshine.”
The two figures man and woman Standing hand in hand together, with their hands so clasped together that they seem in one united. And the words thus represented are, “I see your heart within you.”
Sing them songs of love and longing
Now, let's feast and be more joyous.