Christian Wedding Prayers for Your Marriage Ceremony

Many Christian couples agree that the wedding prayer was one of the most memorable moments of their marriage ceremony, as they knelt before family and friends and dedicated themselves to God and to each other forever.

You may wish to say a wedding prayer together as a couple, or ask your minister or a special guest to say this prayer. Here are three sample Christian wedding prayers to consider including in your marriage ceremony.

A Couple's Wedding Prayer

Dear Lord Jesus,

Thank you for this beautiful day. You have fulfilled the desire of our hearts to be together in this life.

We pray that your blessing will always rest upon our home; that joy, peace, and contentment would dwell within us as we live together in unity, and that all who enter our home may experience the strength of your love.

Father, help us to follow and serve you with an ever growing commitment because of our union. Guide us into greater love and sacrifice as we care for each other's needs, knowing you will care for us. May we always be as keenly aware of your presence as we sense it today on our wedding day. And may our devotion in marriage be a radiant reflection of your love for us.

In the name of Jesus, our Savior, we pray.

Amen.

Wedding Day Prayer

(Adapted from Ephesians 5)

Brothers and sisters,

Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.

Husband, love your wife, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. Christ did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.

Husband, love your wife as you love your own body. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.

Wife, love your husband and yield control to him as to the Lord. For your husband is the head of your family as Christ is the head of the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you ought to yield to your husband in everything.

In the same way, you show reverence to the Lord, wife, show respect to her husband.

Marriage is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.

Amen.

Wedding Prayer

Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.

We thank you, also, for consecrating the union of man and woman in Jesus' name.

By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and this woman.

Defend them from every enemy.

Lead them into all peace.

Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads.

Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death.

Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast forever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

--Book of Common Prayer (1979)

Wedding Prayer for Marriage

Hand in hand, we come before you, O Lord.

Hand in hand, we are stepping out in faith.

We, who are gathered here, ask that you would take this couple into your hands. Help them, O Lord, to keep firm in the commitments they have just made.

Guide them, O God, as they become a family, as they each change through the years. May they be flexible as they are faithful.

And Lord, help us all to be your hands if there be a need. Strengthen, tenderly all of our commitments, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.