Looking for geeky, fandom-inspired readings for your ceremony?

You’re in the right place.

I’ve been building custom weddings for over twenty years, and along the way I’ve collected (and written) a treasure trove of quotes pulled from the worlds we love most: sci-fi, fantasy, comics, games, and everything in between. Some are beloved classics from authors like Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman, and a few are originals I wrote myself for couples who wanted something specific. Below are some of my faves.

If you’d like a ceremony written around your favorite story or universe, that’s my specialty. Get in touch here to start planning your own legendary love story.

1. This For You — Neil Gaiman

A reading written for two of his friends on their wedding day.

"This for you, for both of you,

a small poem of happiness filled with small glories and little triumphs a fragile, short cheerful song filled with hope and all sorts of futures

Because at weddings we imagine the future Because it’s all about 'what happened next?' all the work and negotiation and building and talk that makes even the tiniest happily ever after something to be proud of for a wee forever

This is a small thought for both of you like a feather or a prayer, a wish of trust and love and hope and fine brave hearts and true.

Like a tower, or a house made all of bones and dreams

and tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows."

2. The Amber Spyglass — Phillip Pullman

“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again… I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me.”

3. Star Wars Marriage Address

(original adaptation by Maree Johnston from Babylon 5)

We are assembled here today in the presence of love… but also… the Dark Side.

Today, in your presence, Partner1 and Partner2 will be joined in an inter-galactic marriage, regulated by decrees, sanctioned by the Imperial Senate, and to be held in honor among all members of the Empire.

For the Universe speaks with many languages, but only one voice.

The language is not Sith, Shyriiwook, Huttese, or Droidspeak.
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.

Here, gathered together, in common cause,
We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule:
That we must take care of one another.

No matter the blood, no matter the skin,
No matter the world, no matter the star,
We are One.

Because, in the vast universe — each voice enriches us and ennobles us,
And each voice lost diminishes us.

Many have argued that The Force is a metaphor for love…
If this is true, then the Force is strong here today.
We can feel it course through all of us, in all things…
And most powerfully between Partner1 and Partner2.

4. If I Didn’t Have You — Tim Minchin

I’m not undervaluing what we’ve got when I say that given the role chaos inevitably plays in the inherently flawed notion of “fate” it’s obtuse to deduce that I’ve found my soulmate at the age of seventeen. It’s just mathematically unlikely that at a university in Perth I happened to stumble on the one girl on Earth specifically designed for me.

And if I may conjecture a further objection, love is nothing to do with destined perfection. The connection is strengthened, the affection simply grows over time, like a flower or a mushroom or a guinea pig or a vine or a sponge or bigotry… or a banana.

And love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience and the synergy of a kind of symbiotic empathy or… something.

5. Star Trek: Voyager

“Commander, I don’t think you can analyze love. It’s the greatest mystery of all. No one knows why it happens, or doesn’t. Love is a chance combination of elements. Any one thing might be enough to keep it from igniting – a mood, a glance… a remark. And if we could define love, predict it – it would probably lose its power.”

– Neelix, Star Trek: Voyager, “Unforgettable” (1998)

6. Stardust

“You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars — pain, lies, hate… It made me want to turn away and never look down again.

But when I see the way that mankind loves… you could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable, and strangely easy to mistake for loathing.

And what I’m trying to say, Tristan, is… I think I love you.

Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I’d know it for myself. My heart… it feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it’s trying to escape because it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to you.

And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange: no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.”

— Yvaine, Stardust

7. Wedding Readings from Doctor Who

“You know when sometimes, you meet someone so beautiful — and then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick; but then there’s other people. And you meet them and you think, ‘Not bad, they’re okay,’ and then when you get to know them… their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality’s written all over it, and they just — they turn into something so beautiful. Rory’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.”
— Amy Pond, “The Girl Who Waited”

“Do you wanna come with me? ’Cause if you do, then I should warn you — you’re gonna see all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past. Aliens from the future. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame. It won’t be quiet, it won’t be safe, and it won’t be calm. But I’ll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime!”
— The Ninth Doctor

8. The Chronicles of Narnia — C.S. Lewis

“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.

And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read, which goes on for ever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

9. The Princess Bride — William Goldman

“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.

I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction.

I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids.

I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I E-L-L-O-V-E-E-Y-O-U. Want it backward? You love I.”

10. Babylon 5

“The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice.

The language is not Human, Klingon, Huttese or Gallifreyan.

It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength, and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice.

It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us. And the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. It is the small, still voice that says we are One.

No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star — we are One. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear — we are One.

Here, gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: that we must be kind to one another.

Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us, and each voice lost diminishes us.

We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, and the fire that will light the way to your future together.”

11. Scientific Romance — Tim Pratt

If starship travel from our Earth to some far star and back again at velocities approaching the speed of light made you younger than me due to the relativistic effects of time dilation, I’d show up on your doorstep hoping you’d developed a thing for older men, and I’d ask you to show me everything you learned to pass the time out there in the endless void of night.

If we were the sole survivors of a zombie apocalypse and you were bitten and transformed into a walking corpse I wouldn’t even pick up my assault shotgun, I’d just let you take a bite out of me, because I’d rather be undead forever with you than alive alone without you.

If I had a time machine, I’d go back to the days of your youth to see how you became the someone I love so much today, and then I’d return to the moment we first met just so I could see my own face when I saw your face for the first time, and okay, I’d probably travel to the time when we were a young couple and try to get a three-way going. I never understood why more time travelers don’t do that sort of thing.

If the alien invaders come and hover in stern judgment over our cities, trying to decide whether to invite us to the Galactic Federation of Confederated Galaxies or if instead a little genocide is called for, I think our love could be a powerful argument for the continued preservation of humanity in general, or at least of you and me in particular.

If we were captives together in an alien zoo, I’d try to make the best of it, cultivate a streak of xeno-exhibitionism, waggle my eyebrows, and make jokes about breeding in captivity.

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I’d stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you’d make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches.

If the Singularity comes and we upload our minds into a vast computer simulation of near-infinite complexity and perfect resolution, and become capable of experiencing any fantasy, exploring worlds bound only by our enhanced imaginations, I’d still spend at least 10^21 processing cycles a month just sitting on a virtual couch with you, watching virtual TV, eating virtual fajitas, holding virtual hands, and wishing for the real thing.

12. The Day the Saucers Came — Neil Gaiman

“That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden, silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes.

And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended, waiting, dry-mouthed, to find what waited inside for us — and none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow.

But you didn’t notice it because that day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence, was the day that the graves gave up their dead, and the zombies pushed up through soft earth or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable, came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran — but you did not notice this because…

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us a ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf, all bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out — but you did not see them coming because…

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods day, the floodgates broke and each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites offering us wishes and wonders and eternities and charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold, while giants fee-fo-fum’ed across the land, and killer bees — but you had no idea of any of this because…

That day, the saucer day, the zombie day, the Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came and snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day all plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars, and all the bells of London were sounded, the day animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day, the fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day — you didn’t notice any of this because you were sitting in your room, not doing anything, not even reading, not really, just looking at your telephone, wondering if I was going to call.”

13. Love in Science — Neil deGrasse Tyson, Albert Einstein & Carl Sagan

Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is a tiny blue dot that we humans call home.

And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries. We are constantly reminded that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is a prerequisite to survival.

Our little planet floats like a mote of dust in the morning sky. All that you see, all that we can see, exploded out of a star billions of years ago, and the particles slowly arranged themselves into living things, including all of us. We are made of star stuff. We are the mechanism by which the universe can comprehend itself.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth. We should remain grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. The sum of all our evolution, our thinking and our accomplishments is love.

How on Earth can you explain, in terms of chemistry and physics, so important a biological phenomenon as love?

Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with the person you love for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.

A marriage makes two fractional lives a whole. It gives to two questioning natures a renewed reason for living. It brings a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.