Non-religious Ceremony and Vows?

I am religious but I wanted my ceremony to be very minimally religious. If you want anything religious involved that isn't overtly religious maybe you can have the officiant read a biblical verse that doesn't reference anything to god such as a popular one being Corinthians 13 about love

Just following this since I’m in a similar situation. I haven’t started thinking about the ceremony yet, but I should soon.

I would talk with your officiant. We are the same way, dont want an overly religious ceremony since its its not us. We have 2 readings, both poems/writings that are not from the bible. One is called Ancient Philosophers and talks about love, the other is this super cute story told from the perspective of a dinosaur. Its really lighthearted and us. We are also doing a handfasting ceremony with 6 colored cords. Our ceremony is probably going to be about 30 minutes.

Google is your friend here, there are lots of poems/writings that are not religious that you could use! And honestly, most ceremonies, you can just take out the mentions if religion (God, lord etc) and they will still flow just fine.

I'm in the same boat, he was raised Catholic ( went to Catholic school for k-7th) but isn't really involved in the church anymore, I've never really been religious so I'm thinking a short and sweet ceremony.

My aunt Is officiating our wedding (she just got ordained online) and we are having zero religion in ours. There are tons of things online and pintrest. She found a lot of scripts, poems online that are nonreligious. One of the readings we are going to have read is the art of marriage.

My fiance and I are atheists so we're going to go the same route, except we're thinking of ditching the readings and just doing our own vows.
But his grandfather is the officiant so we'll see what happens!

My husband is catholic but hasn’t been practicing for many years and I’m Methodist but haven’t been in years either and we didn’t want s religious ceremony. My friend who was ordained online did our ceremony and she wrote the whole thing herself and doing some online research. We didn’t include any bible verses or have anyone read anything like that. We did a very short and sweet service and made it totally ours. We did write our own vows and that was important to us. It went fairly quickly and it was beautiful.

Our officiant has religious and non-religious scripts for weddings. We chose non-religious for the same reasons as you. Talk to your officiant and they will help!

We are doing a 100% non-religious ceremony as well (and hoping his family doesn't notice! LOL). We are going to have the officiant say a few words about celebrating life and marriage, etc, etc and I found a reading from Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres which I LOVED because it's not mushy gushy, it's real and honest....

"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."

Definitely check with your officiant for ideas, but also, research a lot on the internet, there are TONS of scripts and you can put together that parts you like from each one.

View Quoted Comment We are doing that reading too! We absolutely loved it! My FH is some sort of religious (I can't remember exactly) but not overly so and I am agnostic. I told him I preferred if we didn't have a religious ceremony but if he had a reading or tradition he would like to include I would be ok with that. We spoke to our officiant and gave him some ideas and he is going to write something up for us. He is my FH's cousin and is a minister but has no problem doing a non-religious ceremony.

This is my second wedding and when I got married the first time we had a justice of the peace and also did not do a religious ceremony. He had some examples of non-religious ones that we chose from. Like PP said, Google is your friend! I wrote our ring exchange vows by finding different things I liked and piecing it together.

Offbeat Bride has a lot of non religious ceremony ideas! I've been checking them out because we are in the same boat.

My husband was adamant about zero religion in our voes. Like none. Our officiant told a few stories of how we met, how we knew him (he is a friend) and then we kicked it old school: To have and to hold, for richer or poorer, etc.

Our guests were all happy with the short service. It took about ten minutes.

Just got married this past Friday, and was in much the same situation; together nearly 12 yrs, neither particularly religious (husband was raised Catholic, but my in-laws are awesome and raised absolutely no fuss about a non-religious ceremony) and wanted a short (~10-15 minutes tops) ceremony.

I don't have much suggestion for welcome/opening remarks: we had the friend who introduced us act as our officiant, and she kept her opening as a surprise for the day-of (essentially just a short story of how we met and things she admired about our relationship). If you've hired a more "official" officiant, they should be happy to talk to and work with you to nail the right tone for the ceremony and keep any religious aspects out of it.

We only did one reading for the ceremony, All I Know About Love by Neil Gaiman - he's an author we both enjoy, so if you have a favorite author, I'd suggest maybe going through any books/poems/essays you have of theirs or do quick google search with them in mind. I also really liked the poem So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye, but only found it on the morning of the ceremony and didn't want to stress out anyone in my party by springing a last minute reading request! And who says you need to stick to books or poems or plays, if you've got a favorite movie with a fitting monologue you could pull from one of those too.

I know you said you guys don't really want to do vows, but on the off-chance you change your mind, my advice on those would be to not look at them as stiff, formal declarations. I literally wrote mine the morning of the wedding and really wasn't looking forward to writing them, but they became so easy to write when I focused more on the foundations we had built our long relationship on, and simply promised to keep those things going. Wasn't super long, I think both my husband and I kept them down to less than 2 min each (he also rick-rolled the entire wedding in his vows, so that's another possible suggestion if you're into that ).

In any case, you're doing a great job thinking of this a month out. Good luck on the last month of planning - sending stress-reducing vibes your way!

Our officiant gave us a non-denominational script we could customize. When you interview officiants ask them if they have a sample ceremony you can customize.

My fiance and I are also agnostic and doing a non-religious ceremony.

We are literally "tying the knot" by doing a hand-fastening. Here's the gist.

OFFICIANT: Bride and Groom have chosen a traditional hand fasting ceremony to symbolize their entering into the bonds of marriage. In the history of some European traditions, weddings were celebrated by a simple ceremony in which two partners would join hands and their wrists would be tied with a cord, symbolizing the binding together of their individual lives. It is from this practice that we get the expression “tying the knot”.

(Couple joins hands)

OFFICIANT: Bride and Groom, this cord is a symbol of the connection between your two lives. As your hands are bound together by this cord, so too, will your lives be bound together in marriage.

(The Couple’s wrists are wrapped and tied loosely with ribbon or cord)

OFFICIANT:

These are the hands that will love you.

These are the hands that will hold and comfort you through the years.

These are the hands that will give you support and encouragement.

These are the hands you will each work with, create with, and use to build a life together.

The knots of this binding are not formed by these cords but instead by your vows,

the promises you make in your hearts and uphold each day through your actions.

Remember, you hold in your own hands the making or breaking of this union.

After this, we'll do a quick and simple exchanging of vows and rings.

We are agnostic as well. Having a close friend who shares our belief host the ceremony. He is preparing something based upon us as a couple. We are reciting NON Traditional vows... we basically sat down and wrote things that matter to us and promises we would want to make to each other... put them together/edited/and created our own vows.

He will start his reading
We will read a small something to each other
He will continue his reading
(Upon the suggestion of our officiant friend) we have asked both of our mothers to recite a reading of their choosing.... I think one has written a poem and one will read a bible verse. Both are only speaking for 90 seconds ish so very short. This allows the people effected most by a lack of "religion" to feel satiated and also allows mom to feel like she can practice her faith on such a big day. Without us having to participate.

Then we will recite our vows /rings
I dos
We are now man and wife... cheers.


There will be no prayer. And no mention of God. Save moms 90 second verse recital (I think the verse is the "love is patient verse. Which I suppose is less of a religious set of verses and more of a great guide about what love means in general terms l)

This thread is very helpful. My FH isn't religious but his parents are and still go to church every weekend, even on vacations so we're a little worried about our decision not to include religion in our ceremony with them. These poems and whatnot are so helpful!

My vows are a bunch of scripts form pinterest put together. lol

All non-religious but you can search for religious as well. Also had a lot of great ideas on making them your own! Good luck!

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My inlaws are very observant, too, and my MIL was a bit put off by us not getting married in front of a minister. Oh well. She got over it.

We're not religious either & I really liked the Art of Marriage poem. I think I'll be including some version of it in our ceremony.