“Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace”

The phrase above is one we have all likely heard in movies, song lyrics, TV shows, but is it still used in weddings today? And where did it come from?

When I hear this phrase I usually think of someone interrupting a wedding because the bride or groom is in love with someone else, as in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grey’s Anatomy’s 10th season, and Taylor Swift’s iconic song, “Speak Now,” which gets its name from the oft-used cinematic wedding phrase. However, long before it appeared on the silver screen, the phrase “speak now or forever hold your peace” was published in The Book of Common Prayer in 1549, but the purpose of this phrase historically was a little different than it is today.

In the days before modern-day technology allowed all of ones friends and loved ones to know about a bride or groom’s upcoming special day, the news would take a while to spread. So the upcoming wedding would be announced three Sundays in a row before the actual wedding day and the wedding itself would be the last opportunity for anyone to speak up against the marriage. However, these objections had less to do with encouraging the bride or groom to follow their hearts and more to do with one of these problematic discoveries:

This happens in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. But as we all know from seeing the relentless lawyer in Sweet Home Alabama, in the modern era marriage without a divorce from a previous spouse is pretty much impossible to achieve without legal powers noticing. This has made the phrase something many engaged couples view as no longer necessary.

Nowadays, most people choose to exclude the phrase “speak now or forever hold your peace” from their weddings. Other couples flip the script on the potentially antiquated phrase by adding an affirmation or a community vow in its place. The wedding-goers are not asked if they have any objections to the marriage, but instead are able to voice their support for the couple and for their union by vowing to encourage and support the couple for all their years to come.

Many officiants no longer use the phrase as a general rule, but if you want to include a community affirmation in its place, or if you are planning on inviting Hugh Grant, Jesse Williams, or Taylor Swift to your wedding, you may want to double-check that the phrase “speak now or forever hold your peace” will not be said during your wedding.