Wedding Day Prayers & Blessings

Everything about your wedding needs to be perfect, especially the words you say.

During your wedding service, it is sometimes a nice touch to have some of the friends and family prayer and or bless the union between the new husband and wife.

Each of you will have to decide for yourselves if you even would want to have prayers and blessings in your wedding service, with an increase of civil weddings, couples may wish to keep the ceremony a strictly non religious affair, which is fine, each service must reflect the couple.

An alternative to prayers could be poems or readings from favourite passages, used as a statement of how the couple feel about each other, or read my friends or family giving the couple advice through this medium.

Christian Prayers & Ceremony Ideas

During more religiously centred services, friends and family invite the Holy Spirit into the lives of the couple by praying across the couple’s hands. This joining of hands and praying over them, is as a sign of the bond between the couple and theirs with God.

If you do not wish to have friends and family pray over you and instead stand at the front while you sit and knee may be preferable to you. Friends and family can either make up their own prayers or blessings, or can read out some more traditional blessings.

Wedding Traditions - Irish & English

Traditionally speaking these prayers and blessings will come after the vows so that the newly married couple can be blessed in their lives together.

Famous Irish wedding toasts and blessings are immensely popular:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields.
May the light of friendship guide your paths together.
May the laughter of children grace the halls of your home.
May the joy of living for one another trip a smile from your lips, a twinkle from your eyes.

May God be with you and bless you;
May you see your children’s children.
May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings,
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

Some couple prefer a more traditional English Prayer such as:

God of love, ever gracious and kind,
We pray for Jane & John as they make the promises of marriage.
Let them know you
As the God of mercy and new beginnings,
Who forgives our failures and renews our hope.
May the grace of Christ
Be poured into their wedding
For celebrations and for joy,
God of love, ever present and faithful, know that their marriage is
Your delight and will.
May the promises they make govern their
Life together,
As your presence surrounds them,
And your Spirit strengthens and guides them;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If you are Catholic then a prayer like this may be used:

Father, you have made the bond of marriage a holy mystery,
a symbol of Christ's love for his Church.
Hear our prayers for N., and N.
With faith in you and in each other they pledge their love today.
May their lives always bear witness to the reality of that love.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Your Wedding Day - It's Personal Choice

To a certain extent whatever you chose, the basic message is one of placing the marriage before God and asking that good things happen to the couple as they go into marriage.

It is also to ask God to bless the love that the couple have for each other. Not only that but it is a chance for the couple to ask God to guide their hearts.

It is also an opportunity for the friends and family to give their blessing of the marriage.