Choral music for a humanist wedding
A humanist wedding is a wholly non-religious ceremony, and most of the wedding choral repertoire is sacred. Take away the Ave Marias, the Panis Angelicus, and the settings of Ubi Caritas, and couples assume a choir has nothing left to sing. That leaves the secular part-song tradition: Stanford, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Lauridsen, Whitacre, and four centuries of choral music about love, weather, and landscape with no God in it anywhere. Almost none of it gets sung at weddings, because church weddings have hymn books instead.
What a humanist ceremony is
A humanist wedding is led by a celebrant accredited by Humanists UK or Humanist Society Scotland, and it is built around the couple rather than around a liturgy. There is no set form of words, no prayers, and no hymns. The celebrant writes the ceremony with you from scratch, usually over two or three long conversations, and the script is unique to you. Most run between twenty and thirty-five minutes.
In England and Wales the ceremony carries no legal force. Couples complete the legal formalities separately at a register office — a short appointment, often on a weekday, with two witnesses — and treat the humanist ceremony as the real wedding. In Scotland, Northern Ireland, Jersey, and Guernsey humanist marriages are legally recognised and no second ceremony is needed. Scotland recognised them in 2005, and since 2022 more humanist weddings have been conducted there each year than religious marriages of all denominations combined.
The Government announced in October 2025 that it intends to recognise humanist marriages in England and Wales as part of a wider reform of marriage law, and set out its proposals for consultation in July 2026. Its own projections suggest one in five couples would choose a humanist ceremony once the law changes. No date has been set, so if you are marrying in 2027 you should plan around the rules as they stand.
Nobody is going to vet your music
Couples have this backwards. At a civil ceremony on approved premises — a hotel, a country house, a register office — the registrar has a duty to keep religious content out of the proceedings, and will ask to see your readings and your music in advance. People get told no. A Latin motet with God in the text will not be approved, whatever the guests take it to mean.
A humanist ceremony has no registrar in the room, because it is not the legal ceremony. Nobody signs off your programme. If you wanted Schubert’s Ave Maria at a humanist wedding, no authority exists to stop you; the constraint is your own conviction and your celebrant’s. Humanists UK celebrants conduct ceremonies without acts of worship, so a hymn or a prayer is out. A piece of music with a religious text sits in between, and it is a conversation with your celebrant rather than a rule handed down.
The five minutes you have to build yourself
A church wedding has a hole in it made for a choir. The couple go off to sign the register with the vicar and two witnesses, the photographs are taken, and a hundred guests sit for four or five minutes with nothing to look at. That is where the anthem goes. A great deal of the wedding choral repertoire is the length it is because of that gap.
A humanist ceremony in England or Wales has no register to sign, because the signing happened at the register office weeks earlier. Remove it and the ceremony runs from processional to recessional with no built-in pause, which leaves a choir singing two pieces of walking music and nothing in between. We have had couples book six singers and then find there was nowhere to put them.
Build the moment on purpose. Three things do the job:
- A symbolic ritual with music underneath it. Handfasting takes three or four minutes done properly, and it is quiet work — hands bound with cord while the celebrant speaks or says nothing at all. A piece sung through it fills the time and covers the business with the ribbon. Ring warming, where the rings are passed around the guests before the exchange, takes longer still and needs music more.
- A keepsake certificate to sign. Many celebrants provide a commemorative certificate for the couple and their witnesses to sign during the ceremony. It has no legal weight, and it restores the four-minute gap.
- A stated listening moment. The celebrant says that the couple have chosen a piece of music and asks everyone to sit and hear it. This reads as artificial on paper. In the room it works, because guests who are told to listen do.
Any of the three gives the choir somewhere to sing something substantial.
English part-songs
Between roughly 1890 and 1930 English composers wrote a large body of unaccompanied secular music for choirs. It was written for competition festivals and choral societies rather than for churches, so it sits outside the sacred repertoire altogether, and hardly any of it is heard at weddings.
The Blue Bird (Stanford, 1910)
Mary Coleridge’s poem is eight lines about a bird crossing a lake. Stanford sets it for four parts held almost motionless while a solo soprano floats above them on the word “blue”. Three minutes, and one of the most beautiful things in the English repertoire. Nothing happens in it, which is why it suits a handfasting: it holds one still image for as long as the ritual takes.
There Is Sweet Music (Elgar, 1907)
Tennyson, set for two choirs a semitone apart — the men in G, the women in A flat. It sounds like a stunt on paper and produces a warm blur of sound in the room. Four minutes. You want at least eight singers and a room with some resonance in it.
My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land (Elgar, 1889)
Andrew Lang’s poem, four voices, three minutes, and a love song without qualification. One of Elgar’s earliest published successes, written a decade before the Enigma Variations made his name.
The Turtle Dove (Vaughan Williams, 1919)
A folk song about a man leaving his love, arranged for a baritone soloist over a humming choir. The tune carries the piece. Two and a half minutes, and four singers are enough.
My Spirit Sang All Day (Finzi, Op. 17 No. 3)
Everything else here is slow. Finzi’s setting of Robert Bridges runs the other way: two minutes, quick, and the word joy threads through it from the first bar to the last. He wrote it during his courtship, before his own marriage, which is about as direct a recommendation as a wedding piece can carry. It is also the hardest thing on this page to bring off — the entries come thick and the tuning is unforgiving — so it wants six good singers rather than four.
Folk arrangements
Folk song is the safest ground at a humanist ceremony. The texts are about people rather than doctrine, the tunes are singable, and a guest who has never sat through a choral concert will still follow one. These also travel better outdoors than anything else here.
Down by the Salley Gardens sets Yeats and has been arranged for choirs many times over; two minutes, and the melody does the work. The Water Is Wide is the one couples recognise, usually in Norman Luboff’s arrangement, and it walks well enough to serve as a processional. My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose gives you Burns, which is useful if either family is Scottish. Loch Lomond exists in two arrangements. Vaughan Williams set it for a baritone soloist and men’s voices, so a mixed group cannot sing it as written; David Overton’s arrangement, made for the King’s Singers, is the SATB one and the one we use.
One to read before you choose: She Moved Through the Fair is as lovely as anything here, and in the last verse the woman returns as a ghost. Choirs routinely drop that verse. Ask whether yours is going to.
Modern secular choral music
The living composers whose work fills wedding shortlists write plenty of sacred music, and a smaller amount of secular music that couples never find because it is filed under concert repertoire.
Dirait-on (Lauridsen, 1993)
The last of Lauridsen’s Les Chansons des Roses, setting Rilke’s French poems about roses. Lauridsen wrote it as a folk song of his own invention, and it behaves like one: a tune that comes round again and gathers voices each time. Three and a half minutes. There is no religion anywhere in Rilke’s roses, which makes it the most useful single piece in this guide.
The Seal Lullaby (Whitacre, 2004)
Kipling, from The Jungle Book — a mother seal singing her pup to sleep. Whitacre wrote it for an animated film that was never made. Three minutes, gentle, and it asks nothing difficult of the singers, which matters when you are booking four or six rather than twenty.
Sleep (Whitacre, 2000)
Written on Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, then stripped of its text when the Frost estate refused permission; Charles Anthony Silvestri wrote new words to fit the existing music. Five minutes, and it needs eight voices or more to hold the chords open.
Tundra (Ola Gjeilo)
If you have heard Gjeilo’s Ubi Caritas at a friend’s wedding and wanted that sound without the Latin prayer, this is where to go. Silvestri’s words describe the Norwegian mountain plateau — grass, snow, sky, and nothing else.
Sure on This Shining Night (Barber, or Lauridsen)
James Agee’s poem about a summer night and being alive underneath it. Barber wrote it as a solo song in 1938 and made the choral version later; Lauridsen set the same words again in 2005. Three minutes either way. The Barber is the more direct of the two and the easier to bring off with a small group.
This Marriage (Whitacre, 2004)
Worth raising because it is the one modern choral piece written about a marriage rather than borrowed for one — Whitacre wrote it for his own wedding anniversary, on Coleman Barks’s translation of Rumi. The text is a thirteenth-century Sufi poet’s: it asks that the marriage be blessed, and it mentions paradise and “here and hereafter”. Some humanist couples read that as poetry and take it. Others do not. Put it to your celebrant rather than deciding on your own.
Madrigals, for guests arriving
The madrigal repertoire is secular by definition. The sixteenth century wrote its sacred music in Latin for church and its secular music in English or Italian for private houses, and the two never met. Morley’s Now Is the Month of Maying and April Is in My Mistress’ Face, Farmer’s Fair Phyllis, and Monteverdi’s Italian books are short, quick, and concerned with spring and courtship.
They were also written to be sung by five or six people standing in a room, which is what a barn or a garden gives you. A long, slow, modern piece needs an acoustic to bloom in. A madrigal does not, so it holds up as background music while guests find their seats.
Read the texts first. A fair number of madrigals are filthier than their tunes let on.
The King’s Singers repertoire
The King’s Singers have spent nearly sixty years assembling the library of secular music that a small professional group can sing unaccompanied. They have used the same six voices since 1968 — two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones, and a bass — and commissioned their arrangements to fit that. Most of it is published as SATB divisi, which means a sextet can perform it and a quartet generally cannot.
It fits a humanist ceremony better than anything else here: unaccompanied by design, almost all secular, and written for the number of singers these venues hold. A sextet starts from £1,600; see our pricing.
And So It Goes (Billy Joel, arr. Bob Chilcott)
Chilcott’s arrangement is the one people mean when they ask for this, and it is among the most requested things the group has recorded. Unaccompanied, hymn-like in its motion, and it settles a room in about three minutes.
Read the words before you book it. Billy Joel wrote a song about handing someone the power to hurt you — “and so it goes, and so it goes, and you’re the only one who knows” — and it closes by offering the beloved a heart to break if they choose. It is a beautiful piece and it is not a celebration. Couples who know the song want it for that reason. Couples who have only heard the arrangement sometimes have not read the last verse.
You Are the New Day (John David, arr. Peter Knight)
Book this one if you want the King’s Singers sound with a text that points forwards. Peter Knight’s arrangement is the version everyone knows, and it runs about two and a half minutes. The title does the work at a wedding, and it is the piece guests are most likely to hum on the way out.
Loch Lomond (arr. David Overton)
A fixture of their concerts for years, and the arrangement that makes the tune work for mixed voices. It opens quietly, gathers through the choruses, and has a real ending rather than a fade. If you want one Scottish piece and you have six singers, this is the one.
Blackbird (Lennon and McCartney, arr. Daryl Runswick)
Runswick puts McCartney’s guitar figure into the voices, which is the whole trick of it. It is short and light, and guests recognise it within a bar or two. The metre shifts about, so it makes poor walking music — keep it for the arrival or a listening moment rather than the processional.
Their folk collection repays going through as a set: She Moved Through the Fair, The Lark in the Clear Air, and Wild Mountain Thyme are all in it, arranged for the same six voices. Tell us which of these you want to hear and we will point you at a recording, or start with ours.
Recent pop songs with published arrangements
Everything in our guide to pop songs for a wedding choir applies here, and applies more freely, since no registrar is deciding whether a lyric counts as religious. That guide covers the songs couples ask for most — Perfect, All of Me, A Thousand Years, Make You Feel My Love.
Most published pop choral music comes with a piano part, and that is worth having rather than working around. Hal Leonard’s Pop Choral Series is the largest catalogue of it — Mac Huff’s Shallow from A Star Is Born, Mark Brymer’s Someone You Loved — and these arrangements sound the way you remember the record because the accompaniment carries half the texture. The voices sit on top of the piano rather than standing in for it.
Book the pianist. An organist or pianist added to a choir costs £225, and it opens the whole accompanied catalogue: any recent song with a published choral arrangement, rather than the handful that exist for voices alone.
Pop arrangements also want more voices than the choral repertoire does. A motet divides four ways, with each singer holding a line. A pop arrangement puts one voice on the tune, which leaves three to carry everything the record has underneath it, and the song stops sounding like itself. Six is the working minimum, and eight where the arrangement splits the sopranos or the basses, as most of them do. Four singers cost from £1,150, six from £1,600, and eight from £2,000.
If you would rather hear voices on their own, the unaccompanied catalogue is smaller and worth knowing by name. VOCES8 publish their arrangements through Edition Peters, most of them written by Jim Clements, and these are conceived a cappella rather than adapted down to it.
Underneath the Stars (Kate Rusby, arr. Jim Clements)
Rusby’s song, arranged for VOCES8 in 2013 and recorded on their album Eventide. SATB divisi, unaccompanied, about three and three-quarter minutes. It suits a ceremony held outdoors as the light goes, or a barn with the lamps down, and the tune is plain enough that guests have it by the second verse.
The Luckiest (Ben Folds, arr. Jim Clements)
Ben Folds wrote it about working out that the odds against meeting this particular person were absurd, and that he cleared them anyway. Clements’s arrangement runs to eight parts, so it wants eight singers. Six will get through it, but the divisions fold back into the line and you lose the spread of the chords. Put it after the vows.
The King’s Singers arrangements above sit in the same category: published, unaccompanied, written for six. Those two catalogues are where we look first, and where an arrangement already exists we use it rather than write another.
One warning, on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, which is requested for weddings more than any other single song. It contains King David, Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, and the word itself several dozen times, so it is a strange fit for a ceremony chosen for its absence of religion. It is also, read closely, a song about a love that has already failed. We will sing it if you want it. We would rather tell you first.
If the song you want has no arrangement
We write one. If a song matters to the two of you and nothing suitable is published — no choral version at all, or none for voices alone when that is what you want — we will arrange it for the singers and players you have booked and the room you are getting married in. There is an additional fee, which depends on the song and how much work it takes, and we quote it before you commit to anything.
Give us time. A four-part arrangement takes one to two weeks to write, and the singers want at least two rehearsals with it in front of them. Eight to twelve weeks from first enquiry is comfortable. Under four weeks is where it starts to show in the singing.
The pieces that catch couples out
Several standards feel secular and are not. Each of these reaches us on shortlists from couples who chose a humanist ceremony because they are not religious.
- Ave Maria — a prayer to the Virgin Mary in the Schubert, the Bach–Gounod, and the Caccini. Schubert’s own text was Walter Scott’s, from The Lady of the Lake, and is not a prayer at all; the Latin was fitted to the tune afterwards. If it is the melody you love, it can be sung to Scott’s English or played without words.
- Panis Angelicus — a Eucharistic hymn. The subject is the bread of the Mass.
- Ubi Caritas — the antiphon says that where charity and love are, God is there. It is the finest wedding motet we sing and it names God in its first line. We have written about where it does belong.
- The Lord Bless You and Keep You — Rutter’s setting of a blessing from the Book of Numbers, and a standard at the end of a church wedding.
- Pie Jesu, Jerusalem, For the Beauty of the Earth, Amazing Grace — prayers and hymns, all four, and all regularly asked for.
The inversion is worth knowing too. Wagner’s Bridal Chorus comes from Lohengrin, an opera, and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March was written for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Neither contains a religious word. Several Catholic dioceses will not allow the Wagner in their churches, so a humanist ceremony is in the odd position of being free to use the two most recognisable pieces of wedding music ever written, while a cathedral is not.
No organ, and often no roof
Humanist ceremonies happen wherever the couple likes: gardens, barns, woodland, village halls, the family house, the top of a hill. None of it needs a licence, because licensing attaches to the legal ceremony and there isn’t one. That freedom is why people choose a humanist wedding, and it is the hardest part of the music.
Almost none of these venues has an organ, and plenty have no piano worth playing. That is why so much of this page is unaccompanied repertoire: singers need no instrument, no power supply, and no tuning, and they take about a square metre each.
Outdoors is a separate problem. Unaccompanied voices need a surface to reflect from, and a lawn has none: the sound goes up and does not come back. Slow chord-based writing suffers most — Whitacre’s held harmonies depend on a room, and in the open air they thin out to nothing. Music with a strong tune and a clear pulse survives. The folk arrangements work outside. The madrigals work outside. Stanford’s Blue Bird, with a solo soprano over a hushed four-part accompaniment, does not, and we will say so rather than take the booking and let it fail on the day.
An instrument helps outdoors more than most couples expect. Unaccompanied singers in the open have nothing to tune to and nothing underneath them, and a piece that starts in tune can sag a semitone by the end of five minutes without anyone doing anything wrong. A keyboard gives them a floor and holds the pitch there. If you want the slow, chord-based repertoire at an outdoor ceremony, an accompanist is what makes it work.
Two rules for an outdoor ceremony: add singers, and put them close. Six voices outside carry about as far as four inside. Standing the choir two metres behind the couple rather than off to one side means the back row hears something. If there is a marquee, sing inside it — canvas reflects far better than grass. See our pricing for what each size of ensemble costs.
Adding a pianist or organist
An accompanist costs £225 added to a choir booking, against £250 for one on their own, and it is the single change that most widens what you can have. They cover any hymn accompaniment and up to three performance pieces, which in practice means the processional, one piece inside the ceremony, and the recessional. Where the venue has a pipe organ we send an organist experienced with that instrument; where there is nothing, we bring a portable keyboard for a charge we quote upfront.
Beyond the repertoire, two things matter. The first is timing. A humanist ceremony runs to no fixed clock: the handfasting takes as long as it takes, guests arrive late, and the celebrant reaches the vows two minutes before the order of service says so. A player can stretch or cut on the spot. Six singers holding a written arrangement can do neither without it showing.
The second is the arrival. Twenty minutes of music while a hundred people find their seats is a lot to ask of a choir, and it is the least rewarding thing they do all day. A pianist covers that stretch without effort and leaves the singers fresh for the ceremony itself. A harpist suits an outdoor arrival particularly well; instrumentalists start from £250.
If you want live music at a smaller ceremony without a full choir, a soloist with an accompanist is £450 rather than £500 booked apart.
A worked programme
A thirty-minute humanist ceremony, six singers, voices alone:
- Guests arriving, fifteen minutes — madrigals. Morley’s Now Is the Month of Maying, Farmer’s Fair Phyllis, and three or four more. Short pieces, light on their feet. Nobody is listening properly yet.
- Processional — The Water Is Wide, or the Mendelssohn if you want the grin of recognition. Something with a pulse, because a person has to walk to it.
- The welcome and the readings — nothing. Let the celebrant work.
- Under the handfasting, three to four minutes — The Blue Bird indoors, The Turtle Dove outdoors.
- After the vows and the rings — Dirait-on. This is the emotional peak of the ceremony and it should get the best piece you have.
- Recessional — something quick that the guests know. You Are the New Day does it without needing a pop arrangement written from scratch.
That comes to six pieces, which is what six singers can hold to a professional standard on a single rehearsal. Asking for twelve is where wedding music programmes start to come apart. For the full shape of a ceremony from prelude to recessional, our guide to wedding ceremony music covers the church version alongside this one.
Add a pianist and the shape changes. They take the arrival on their own, so the choir starts fresh at the processional; the processional itself gains a build that six voices cannot manufacture; and after the vows you can have an accompanied arrangement of a song that matters to you rather than choosing from the a cappella shelf. That is £225 on top of the choir.
Frequently asked questions
What music can you have at a humanist wedding?
Any music without religious content. There is no approved list and no registrar to clear it with, because a humanist ceremony in England and Wales is not the legal marriage. The secular choral repertoire covers English part-songs such as Stanford’s The Blue Bird, folk arrangements such as The Turtle Dove, Renaissance madrigals, modern pieces such as Lauridsen’s Dirait-on and Whitacre’s The Seal Lullaby, and close-harmony arrangements from the King’s Singers repertoire such as Billy Joel’s And So It Goes.
Can you have hymns at a humanist wedding?
No. Humanist celebrants conduct ceremonies without acts of worship, so hymns, prayers, and blessings are out. A piece of music with a religious text sits somewhere in between, and it is worth raising with your celebrant rather than assuming the answer either way.
Do you need a choir for a humanist wedding?
No. Unaccompanied singers are the simplest option, since they need no instrument and no power: four cost from £1,150 and six from £1,600. Adding an organist or pianist costs £225 on top of a choir booking and opens up the accompanied repertoire. Where the venue has no instrument we bring a portable keyboard, at an additional charge quoted upfront.
Is a humanist wedding legally binding in England and Wales?
Not at present. Couples in England and Wales complete the legal formalities separately at a register office. Humanist marriages are already legally recognised in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Jersey, and Guernsey. The Government set out proposals to recognise them in England and Wales in July 2026, but no date has been set.
How many singers do you need for a pop song?
Six in most cases. A pop arrangement puts one voice on the melody, so a quartet leaves only three parts to carry the rest, and published arrangements usually split the sopranos or the basses on top of that. Four singers cost from £1,150, six from £1,600, and eight from £2,000.
Can you provide music if the venue has no piano or organ?
Yes. We bring a portable keyboard to venues with no instrument, at a charge quoted upfront. Where there is a pipe organ we send an organist experienced with that kind of instrument. An organist or pianist costs £225 added to a choir booking, or £250 on their own.
Can you arrange a song that has no choral version?
Yes. We write bespoke arrangements for the voices you have booked, which is often the answer when a song has no unaccompanied version or the only published one needs a piano. There is an additional fee depending on the song and the work involved, quoted before you commit. Allow eight to twelve weeks from first enquiry.
Can a choir sing outdoors at a humanist ceremony?
Yes, with two adjustments. Unaccompanied voices have nothing to reflect off outdoors, so add singers and stand them close to the guests: six outside carry about as far as four inside. Music with a strong tune and a clear pulse survives; slow chord-based pieces that depend on a room’s resonance do not.
Talk to us about your ceremony
Tell us where you are getting married and we will tell you what will work in the space. If it is outdoors we will say how many singers it needs, and whether what you have chosen needs a pianist under it. If the piece you have in your head turns out to have a God in it, we will find you the secular equivalent rather than try to talk you out of the ceremony you have planned. The conversation is free and there is no obligation.
You might also find these useful: how to hire a choir for your wedding covers ensemble sizes and booking, pop songs for a wedding choir covers the modern end of the repertoire, and lesser-known choral pieces goes further off the beaten track for couples marrying in a church. If you are planning a humanist funeral or memorial instead, our guide to non-religious funeral music takes the same approach.
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