Wedding Readings for Friends: The Best Readings for Your Bestie's Wedding

Whether you've known your friend all your life and have seen them blossom in their relationship, or you became close after they'd found the one, these wedding readings are perfect for friends to give at a wedding. 

We’ve enlisted the advice of expert wedding celebrant, Amanda Wheal of Amanda’s Beautiful Ceremonies, who has shared with us her top tips on how to choose the perfect passage for a friend to read at a wedding. 

Whether you’d like to include a friendship quote as part of a wedding toast, or recite an entire passage during the ceremony - there are so many occasions where wedding readings for friends can be used, depending on what you've been asked to do. 

And friendship readings for weddings aren’t just useful for the happy couple - they're also great if you're stuck on what to write in a wedding card.

Whatever the relationship, summarising years of friendship and love in just a few words is a big task - so we hope these sweet wedding readings for friends can help. From readings to poems, here are 15 of our favourites! 

• Wedding Readings For Friends
• Wedding Poems on Friendship
• How To Choose Wedding Readings For Friends: Expert Tips

Wedding Readings For Friendship

The best part of your choosing a wedding reading about friendship is that there are so many options to browse. From films and TV shows to books and songs, in today's day and age, we're truly spoilt for choice! Here are just some of the many tried and tested classic wedding readings on friendship that always go down well on the big day. 

1. Friendship – Judy Bielicki

• Expert take: This beautiful example of friendship readings for weddings is guaranteed to get guests reaching for the tissues!

It is often said that it is love that makes the world go round. However, without doubt, it is friendship which keeps our spinning existence on an even keel.

True friendship provides so many of the essentials for a happy life — it is the foundation on which to build an enduring relationship, it is the mortar which bonds us together in harmony, and it is the calm, warm protection we sometimes need when the world outside seems cold and chaotic.

True friendship holds a mirror to our foibles and failings, without destroying our sense of worthiness. True friendship nurtures our hopes, supports us in our disappointments, and encourages us to grow to our best potential.

Bride and Groom came together as friends. Today, they pledge to each other not only their love, but also the strength, warmth and, most importantly, the fun of true friendship.

2. All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten – Robert Fulgham

• Expert take: Sweet friendship readings for weddings always go down well, especially for friends who have known one half or both of the couple right from the beginning. 

All of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Give them to someone who feels sad.

Live a balanced life.

Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day.

Take a nap every afternoon.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

3. Love Is Friendship Set On Fire – Laura Hendricks

• Expert take: Filled with wisdom and some sage advice, you can’t go wrong with this sparkling example of friendship readings for weddings. 

Love is friendship caught fire; it is quiet, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weaknesses. Love is content with the present, hopes for the future, and does not brood over the past.

It is the day-in and day-out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals. If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you do not have it, no matter what else there is, it is not enough.

4. Friends - Monica’s Quote

• Expert take: We’re not going to lie, we totally cried watching this the first time around and we bet your guests will too! It’s one of the classic wedding readings for friends to read as it never gets old.

For so long I wondered if I would ever find my prince, my soulmate. Then three years ago, at another wedding, I turned to a friend for comfort. And instead, I found everything that I’d ever been looking for my whole life. And now here we are with our future before us, and I only want to spend it with you, my prince, my soulmate, my friend.

5. Boy Meets World - 

• Expert take: Hands up if you know your friend had a crush on their partner since you all wore braces! This is the perfect wedding reading for a friend if they’re marrying someone they’ve loved since childhood.

I haven’t been together with Topanga for 22 years, but we have been together for 16. ‘Kay, that’s a lot longer than most couples have been together. I mean, when we were born, you told me that we used to take walks in our strollers together in the park.

When we were two, we were best friends, I mean, I, I knew everything about this girl. I knew her favorite color. I knew her favorite food. Then we became six, you know, and Eric made fun of me because it wasn’t cool to have a best friend that was a girl or even know a girl, so for the next seven years I threw dirt at her.

I like to call those “the lost years”. Then when I was thirteen, Mom, she put me up against my locker and she kissed me. I mean, she gave me my first kiss. She taught me how to dance. She was always talking about these crazy things and I never understood a word she said.

All I understood was that she was the girl I sat up every night thinking about, and when I’m with her I feel happy to be alive. Like I can do anything. Even talk to you like this. So that’s, that’s what I feel is love… When I’m better because she’s here…

6. The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks

• Expert take: For many of us, we first saw what true love looks like by watching Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in this iconic movie. Recapture the magic of puppy love with this wonderful quote.

You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.

You are, and always have been, my dream. I love you.

7. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

• Expert take: This is a classic choice for any literature lovers out there - the perfect reading for hopeless romantics. 

We are all on our own paths, all on our own journeys. Sometimes the paths cross, and people arrive at the crossing points at the same time and meet each other. 

There are greetings, pleasantries are exchanged, and then they move on. But then once in a while the pleasantries become more, friendship grows, deeper links are made, hands are joined and love flies. 

The friendship has turned into love. Paths are joined, one path with two people walking it, both going in the same direction, and sharing each other’s journeys. 

They will now skip together in harmony and love, sharing joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, strengthening and upholding each other as they walk along side by side. 

At home by the fire, whenever I look up, there you will be. And whenever you look up, there I shall be.

8. The Bridge Across Forever - Richard Bach

• Expert take: This passage perfectly articulates the bond we share with people who make us feel safe and comfortable - exactly how two nearlyweds should feel towards each other. 

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. 

When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. 

Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. 

Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. 

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

9. Only Once in Your Life  (Abbreviated) – Bob Marley

• Expert take: When it comes to love, no-one describes it better than the King of reggae. There will be no dry eyes in the house when your guests hear his words on finding your soulmate. 

Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. 

You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. 

They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. 

Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. 

You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. 

Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.

10. Artist of Life, Bruce Lee

• Expert take: Lee wasn’t just a legend of martial arts - he also had a smooth tongue, and this passage is one of Amanda the Celebrant’s favourites. 

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. 

As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Wedding Poems On Friendship

If you've been asked to read a wedding poem about friendship, these beautiful poems about friends and friendship will inspire you.

Whether you’re reading a wedding poem to a friend or a loved one, here are some wedding poems that we believe will start a marriage off on a beautiful note. 

11. A Chinese Wedding Poem – Anon

• Expert take: For a best friend, wedding poems can summarise the greatest of feelings in a few short lines. This simple and sweet friendship wedding reading can be squeezed into the smallest slots.

I want to be your friend

For ever and ever without break or decay.

When the hills are all flat

And the rivers are all dry,

When it lightens and thunders in winter,

When it rains and snows in summer,

When Heaven and Earth mingle

Not ’til then will I part from you.

12. The Love of a Friend – Anon

• Expert take: A poem to rival the likes of Keats and Coleridge’s most romantic pieces, this reading is packed with gorgeous imagery. If you’re hunting for tried and trusted readings for weddings by friends of the happy couple, this one always goes down well. 

Like music heard on still waters,

Like pines when the wind passeth by,

Like pearls in the deep of the ocean,

Like stars which enamel the sky,

Like June and the odour of roses,

Like dew and the freshness of morn,

Like sunshine which kisses the clover,

Like tassels of silk on the corn,

Like notes of thrush in the woodland,

Like brooks where violets grown,

Like rainbows that arch the blue heaven,

Like clouds when the sun dippeth low,

Like dreams of Arcadian pleasure

Like colours which gracefully blend,

Like everything breathing of pureness,

Like these is the love of a friend.

13. Love and Friendship – Emily Brontë

• Expert take: The perfect pick for couples marrying in the great outdoors, this is one of the most beautiful wedding poems for friends to read on the special day.

Love is like the wild rose-briar,

Friendship like the holly-tree—

The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms

But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,

Its summer blossoms scent the air;

Yet wait till winter comes again

And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now

And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,

That when December blights thy brow

He still may leave thy garland green.

14. You Are The Bubbles - Rachel Bright

• Expert take: This is one of Amanda the celebrant’s favourite wedding poems - it paints such a beautiful image!

Together, you are the bubbles in one another’s champagne

The morning sun through a window

The breaking of a smile.

Together, you are the one doughnut in the bag with more jam than all the others.

That photo where everybody looks great.

The know-all-the-words, sing-out-of-tune chorus of your favourite song.

Together, you are the beginnings of a big idea.

The twinkly bits that hang in the sky after the firework goes bang.

The cold, thin air at the top of a mountain.

The only two people in a crowded room.

Together, you are that unforgettable day of the holiday.

An accidental adventure.

Chocolate chip.

The last two pages of your favourite book.

A BBQ with friends.

The spray of the sea.

The nose of the cheese.

A kiss.

A hug.

A hold-my-hand.

A decision which, looking back, will seem to be the most excellent one you’ve ever made.

Together you are bubbles.

The unburstable bubbles of the very best things in life.

The only things any of us ever really need.

15. A Vow - Wendy Cope

• Expert take: This poem perfectly articulates what love feels like - if you’re writing your own vows but stuck on what to say, take inspiration from these beautiful verses.

I cannot promise never to be angry;

I cannot promise always to be kind.

You know what you are taking on, my darling –

It’s only at the start that love is blind.

And yet I’m still the one you want to be with

And you’re the one for me – of that I’m sure.

You are my closest friend, my favourite person,

The lover and the home I’ve waited for.

I cannot promise that I will deserve you

From this day on. I hope to pass that test.

I love you and I want to make you happy.

I promise I will do my very best. 

How To Choose Wedding Readings For Friends: Expert Tips

With so many wonderful readings to choose from, choosing the perfect wedding reading about friendship can be an overwhelming task. 

We asked expert wedding celebrant Amanda to share her top tips: 

“My advice on choosing your reading would be to be authentic about your relationship but also to consider the tone and formality of your ceremony. There are some very down to earth and fun readings, and also some more formal ones. 

“If you have a good friend doing a reading it's nice to let them choose one as they know you very well, and it's a nice surprise to hear their choice on the day. Also, if you have children there are some great readings that are available for them to read that are age appropriate. 

“As a celebrant I get to know my couples and if they can't find a reading I'll give suggestions, but only once I've got to know them better so I understand what their relationship is really about. 

“It's really important that couples understand they - or I - can do a "mash up", to put together the best lines of a variety of readings and add some personalisation."

Can Wedding Readings Be Funny? 

We love funny wedding readings that make the entire wedding party crack up in stiches. Here's Amanda's expert take:

“Couples can also add some funny parts about things they love. For example, a foodie might say "you're the macaroni to my cheese" or "the sweet to my sour". 

“These ideas can help a couple to write their own reading, or I often create something for them which is great fun and makes their ceremony totally unique!"

Wedding readings sorted? It’s time to sort your speech, so read all about how to begin your wedding speech.