How to choose an Irish blessing for a wedding

Irish on a wedding card is a small act of trust: the person writing it usually cannot check it, and the couple receiving it usually cannot either. So before anything else, one rule: use a wording you can trace. Every saying in this guide has its source a click away. After that, choosing well is mostly a matter of matching the register of the saying to the job you need it to do.

The three jobs wedding Irish is asked to do

Wedding wording ends up in three places, and they want different things. A card wants a blessing addressed to the couple. Warm, direct, short enough to handwrite. A speech or reading wants a proverb: something that earns a nod from the room because it is true, not because it is romantic. An engraving or printed piece wants compression above all: few words, no ambiguity, fadas exactly right, because errors in metal and print outlive everyone at the party.

For the card: address the couple

The natural choice is Go maire sibh bhur saol nua. May you enjoy your new life together. Two things make it right. It is in the plural. Irish distinguishes the “you” of one person from the “you” of two, and this is the two-person form, spoken to the couple as a couple. And it uses the subjunctive that Irish reserves for wishes and blessings, a grammatical register English has largely lost. A fluent reader hears the form itself as ceremonial.

If the gift is a thing (a framed print, glassware, anything handed over) there is also Go maire tú is go gcaithe tú é, the traditional words for presenting something new: may you live to enjoy it and wear it. It blesses the object by blessing the years of its use, which is a very Irish way around.

For the reading: the shelter proverb

The line most often read at Irish weddings is Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine: people live in one another’s shelter. It is not a marriage text at all, which is exactly why it works: it states what a shared life is for, in nine words, without a single sentimental one. The word scáth means both shadow and shelter, and the proverb means both at once. You stand in someone’s shade and it keeps the rain off. We have written about this line’s whole career separately, because it has earned one.

The other proverb that carries a speech well is Ní buan cogadh na gcarad , a quarrel between friends does not last. Said with a smile at the right moment in a best man’s speech, it is both a joke and a benediction, and it has been doing that double duty for a long time.

For the engraving: fewest words, hardest wearing

Ní neart go cur le chéile: there is no strength without pulling together, is five words, structurally simple, and says what a marriage is without romance or religion. It survives being made small, which is the real test of an engraving. If even five words is too many, the single word of the toast, Sláinte!, has closed more Irish weddings than everything else on this page combined: health, raised in a glass.

Three checks before anything is printed

First, the fadas. In Irish a missing acute is not a typo but a different word. We keep a whole essay on this, so compare the final proof letter by letter against the record page, and use the copy button there, which carries the marks with it. Second, the pronouns and number: the sayings above differ between addressing one person and two, and a blessing to the couple should be in the couple form. Third, the source: if a wording you found elsewhere is not on this site, that may be because nobody can say where it came from. For words meant to outlast the day, prefer the ones with a paper trail.

When you have chosen, the record page for each saying carries its literal rendering, its pronunciation guide, and its citation, and our wedding gift page gathers the whole shortlist with a note on which moment each suits.