Holy moly, marriage quotes can be a pain. Real talk: when Michael and I were putting together our wedding ceremony, we really struggled to find marriage quotes that we didn’t—what’s the word—hate. We were in a bit of a double bind. We wanted the written portions to feel deep and meaningful and to reflect our views on marriage, but we also wanted them to feel like us. And the problem was so many of the marriage quotes we were finding at the time felt saccharine. And insincere. And just plain bad. (Sorry, but my love is not like an ocean.) So he and I spent hours and hours searching all the wedding quotes that existed on the Internet, and then cried a little because endless googling makes your brain go fuzzy and deargodthesewereawful.

So, we wanted better for you. Maybe you could skip the crying part and go right to the part where you go, “OMG THAT IS PERFECT FOR US.” So today we’ve rounded up eighty-five of our favorite marriage quotes for you right here. (And if you’re planning a Christian or Jewish wedding, you should check out our best Bible verses for weddings as well.) We’ve broken these marriage quotes up by length (with some bonus pop-culture quotes thrown in for good measure), because while longer quotes are great for a wedding ceremony, shorter wedding quotes actually make for really great decor items.

Some of my favorite ways to include marriage quotes in your decor are right here:

Resin welcome sign

A giant statement backdrop

Letters leading up to the ceremony site

Faux neon reception sign

Aisle backdrop with vinyl letters and book pages

Personalized cocktail napkins

And now, on to the marriage quotes. With eighty-five thoughtfully selected quotes, I’m pretty sure there is something that is just right for you.

SHORT and Sweet marriage quotes

1. All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. J.M. Barrie
2. The only magic I still believe in is love.
3. If I know what love is, it is because of you. Hermann Hesse
4. Who, being loved, is poor. Oscar Wilde
5. I have found the one whom my soul loves. Song of Solomon
6. A party without cake is just a meeting. Julia Child
7. Can I get a witness? Marvin Gaye
8. You give good love. Whitney Houston
9. I walk the line. Johnny Cash
10. No parking on the dance floor. Midnight Star

Sentimental Marriage quotes

1. They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known and even that is an understatement. F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary? J.M. Barrie
4. Being in love is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone. Zelda Fitzgerald
5. Laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters. Tom Robbins
6. When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms. Mary Oliver
7. Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
8. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through… You won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. Haruki Murakami
9. Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. Nicole Krauss
10. The things that you have done for me to help me, support me, surprise me, to make me happy, go above and beyond what any person deserves. You’re all I need. I love you and I like you. Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation
11. I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Kurt Vonnegut
12. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
13. Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Marriage quotes to use in your ceremony

1. For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love. Nicole Krauss
2. They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the “blaze of passion” often falsely
   ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw in their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
3. Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free. Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
4. When two people meet and fall in love, there’s a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it’s usually too late, we’ve used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It’s hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay. Tom Robbins
5. Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate. Oscar Wilde
6. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take… If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation… It takes a lifetime to learn another person… When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. Madeleine L’Engle
7. “Finnick!” Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A lovely if somewhat bedraggled young woman—dark tangled hair, sea green eyes—runs toward us in nothing but a sheet. “Finnick!” And suddenly, it’s as if there’s no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible. A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could doubt their love. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
8. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love. John Muir, Mountain Thoughts

Marriage quotes from Songs

1. And with love like that
   you know you should be glad
   The Beatles, “She Loves You“
2. I just left the mall, I’m getting fly with my baby, yeah
   And I can ride with my baby
   I be in the kitchen cooking pies with my baby
   Fetty Wap, “Trap Queen”
3. In the darkest night hour,
   I’ll search through the crowd.
   Your face is all that I see,
   I’ll give you everything.
   Baby love me lights out.
   Beyonce, “XO”
4. I got a man to stick it out
   And make a home from a rented house
   And we’ll collect the moments one by one
   I guess that’s how the future’s done.
   Feist, “Mushaboom”
5. Now I tell you openly
   You have my heart so don’t hurt me
   You’re what I couldn’t find
   Totally amazing mind
   So understanding and so kind
   You’re everything to me
   The Cranberries, “Dreams”
6. Every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me.
   The White Stripes, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”
7. I’ve seen you laugh at nothing at all
   I’ve seen you sadly weeping
   The sweetest thing I ever saw
   Was you asleep and dreaming
   Magnetic Fields, “Asleep and Dreaming”
8. And you can use my skin to bury secrets in
   and I will settle you down
   and at my own suggestion I will ask no questions
   while I do my thing in the background.
   Fiona Apple, “I Know”
9. Let’s pretend we’re eight years old playing hooky
   I’ll draw on the wall and you can play UFC rookie
   Then we’ll grow up
   Take our clothes off
   And you remind me that I wanted you to kiss me when we find some time alone
   And then we can do anything we want
   Fiona Apple, “Anything We Want”
10. Whenever I’m alone with you
    You make me feel like I am home again
    Whenever I’m alone with you
    You make me feel like I am whole again
    The Cure, “Lovesong”
11. So girl, leave your boots by the bed we ain’t leaving this room
    Till someone needs medical help or the magnolias bloom
    It’s cold in this house and I ain’t going out to chop wood
    So cover me up and know you’re enough to use me for good
    Jason Isbell, “Cover Me Up”
12. She said “If love
    If love
    Is a poison cup
    Then drink it up
    ’Cause a sip
    A sip
    Or a spoonful won’t do
    Won’t do nothing for you
    Except mess you up”
    M. Ward, “Poison Cup”
13. And when you’re holding me
    We make a pair of parentheses
    There’s plenty space to encase
    Whatever weird way my mind goes
    I know I’ll be safe in these arms
    The Blow, “Parentheses”
14. No one else can make me feel the colours that you bring,
    Stay with me while we grow old,
    And we will live each day in spring time.
    Minnie Riperton, “Loving You“
15. I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
    But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
    And I’d probably be happy
    Bright Eyes, “