Readings
As in all aspects of your weddings, there are few rules. You don’t have to include readings, but if you find one that you really, really love, then it could be special.
Either I can read, or you might choose to give that honour to a special guest. Preferably choose someone who is a good, confidant reader - a person who is happy to do it, as opposed to someone who is terrified! ;)
POEMS & READINGS
Have you got a biro I can borrow?
By Clive James
I carry your heart
by E.E Cummings
Touched by an angel
by Maya Angelou
“I’d like to write your name
On the palm of my hand,
on the walls of the hall
The roof of the house,
right across the land
So when the sun comes up tomorrow
It’ll look to this side
of the hard-bitten planet
Like a big yellow button
with your name written on it
Have you got a biro I can borrow? I’d like to write some lines
In praise of your knee,
and the back of your neck
And the double-decker bus
that brings you to me
So when the sun comes up tomorrow It’ll shine on a world
made richer by a sonnet
And a half-dozen epics
as long as the Aeneid
Oh give me a pen and some paper Give me a chisel or a camera A piano and a box of rubber bands
I need room for choreography And a darkroom for photography Tie the brush into my hands
Have you got a biro I can borrow? I’d like to write your name
From the belt of Orion
to the share of the Plough
The snout of the Bear
to the belly of the Lion
So when the sun
goes down tomorrow
There’ll never be a minute
Not a moment of the night
that hasn’t got you in it.”
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage.
I carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring,
and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another –
not so much to fill your emptiness
as to help you to know your fullness.
A mountain needs a valley to be complete;
the valley does not make the mountain less,
but more; and the valley is more a valley
because it has a mountain towering over it.
So let it be with you and you…
May you have happiness,
and may you find it making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it loving one another.
We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze, and not to be alone.
It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean. Somebody's got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you or send for the army to rescue them.
It's not two broken halves becoming one.
It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing, like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them. Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials. Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours, and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand, not knowing for certain if someone else is even there. And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again. And that's all I know about love.
Everything I know About Love
by Neil Gaiman
Blessing For A Marriage
(an extract)by James Dillet Freeman
This Marriage
by Rumi
Union
by Robert Fulghum
Everything I know About Love
by Dolly Alderton
Look at one another and remember this moment in time.
Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years.
Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.
I know that love can be loud and jubilant…It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band.
It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them.
It’s laughing until you wheeze.
It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.
It’s skinny-dipping at dawn.
It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.
It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.
I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.
It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee.
It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.
It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine.
It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’.
I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in the Emergency Department or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.
Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.
SONG LYRICS & OTHER MUSICAL ARTISTS
(THESE COULD ALSO WORK AS WEDDING VOWS!?)
Words
by Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
“All of me
Loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
Give your all to me
I'll give my all to you
You're my end and my beginning
Even when I lose I'm winning
'Cause I give you all of me
And you give me all of you”
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can.
He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyse. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there.
Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
I love you more than ever,
more than time and more than love
I love you more than money
and more than the stars above
Love you more than madness,
more than waves upon the sea
Love you more than life itself,
you mean that much to me
Ever since you walked right in,
the circle’s been complete
I’ve said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street
To the courtyard of the jester
which is hidden from the sun
I love you more than ever
and I haven’t yet begun
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
"When the rain is blowing in your face,
And the whole world is on your case,
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
When the evening shadows and the stars appear, And there is no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love.
I know you haven’t made your mind up yet, But I will never do you wrong.
I’ve known it from the moment that we met, No doubt in my mind where you belong.
I could make you happy, make your dreams come true. Nothing that I wouldn’t do.
Go to the ends of the Earth for you,
To make you feel my love. "
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four
You'll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four
Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
We're the best partners this world's ever seen, Together as close as can be.
Sometimes it's hard to find time in between, To tell you what you are to me.
You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
If you're tired, rest your head on my arm. Rose of my heart.
When sorrow holds you in her arms of clay, It's rain drops that fall from your eyes.
Your smile's like the sun come to earth for a day, You brighten my blackest of skies.
You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
If you're cold, let my love make you warm. Rose of my heart.
So hard times or easy times, what do I care, There's nothing I'd change if I could.
The tears and the laughter are things that we share, Your hand in mine makes all times good.
You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
You're my harbor in life's restless storm.
Rose of my heart.
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
“If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people.
If you want infinite variety,
stay with one.”
What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way,
that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over.
You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material.
With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love.
It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble.
You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love
enshrined in movies.
It’s warmer and has more
padding to it.”
“All Of Me”
by John Legend
“Make You Feel My Love”
by Bob Dylan
“Rose of my Heart"
by Johnny Cash
"He’s Not perfect"
by Bob Marley
“When I'm Sixty-Four”
by The Beatles
Bob Dylan's Wedding Song
QUOTES AND SHORTER WORDS
Yoko Ono
"A dream you dream alone is only a dream;
a dream you dream together is reality."
Dr. Seuss
“We are all a little weird and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
Virginia Woolf from Night and Day
"I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything."
FROM BOOKS AND OTHER SOURCES
From ‘'The Chaos of The Stars''
by Kiersten White
I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you,
with my eyes wide open,
choosing to take every step along the way.
I do believe in fate and destiny,
but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway.
And I'd choose you;
in a hundred lifetimes,
in a hundred worlds,
in any version of reality,
I'd find you and I'd choose you.
From "Blue-eyed Devil"
by Lisa Kleypas
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
From "Soul Mates"
by Lang Leav
I don’t know how you are so familiar to me — or why it feels less like I am getting to know you and more as though I am remembering who you are. How every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before, I have loved you before — in another time, a different place, some other existence.
FROM TV AND MOVIES
TV - “Sex and the City – Carrie”
"His hello was the end of her endings
Her laugh was their first step down the aisle
His hand would be hers to hold forever
His forever was as simple as her smile
He said she was what was missing
She said instantly she knew
She was a question to be answered
And his answer was 'I do.'"
—Carrie
Movie – “Hitch”
“Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink.
But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love.
If you must steal, steal away from bad company.
If you must cheat, cheat death.
And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.”
“Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away.”
“So how does it happen, great love? Nobody knows… but what I can tell you is that it happens in the blink of an eye.
One moment you’re enjoying your life, and the next you’re wondering how you ever lived without them.”
Lord Of The Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring
"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone." —Arwen
Movie – “Sleepless in Seattle”
"It was a million tiny little things that,
when you added them all up,
they meant we were supposed to be together...and I knew it.
I knew it the very first time I touched her.
It was like coming home, only to no home I'd ever known.”