When it comes to #wedding readings, it’s important that you both choose something that reflects your relationship and the way you feel about your #marriage. Whether a scripture passage, poem stanza, or children’s book excerpt, the readings at your wedding should reflect your style as a couple as well as invite guests to learn more about the love you share with each other. Off-the-radar texts offer just as much heartfelt emotion as the regulars. Here is are some examples to get you thinking on the some that might tug at your heartstrings – hopefully you’ll find the perfect match!
From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
I wanna Grow Old With You from The Wedding Singer
I wanna make you smile
Whenever you’re sad
Carry you around when your arthritis is bad
All I wanna do, is grow old with you
I’ll get you medicine when your tummy aches
Build you a fire if the furnace breaks
So, it could be so nice growing old with you,….
I’ll miss you
Kiss you
Give you my coat when you are cold
Need you
Feed you
Even let you hold the remote control.
So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink
Put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink
Oh I could be the man that grows old with you
I wanna grow old with you.
Love is a temporary madness, from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.
That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an #art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots
that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
Louis de Bernieres
To love is not to possess, by James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
Love me when I am old, by Bee Rawlinson
Love me when I’m old and shocking
Peel off my elastic stockings
Swing me from the chandeliers
Let’s be randy bad old dears.
Push around my chromed Bath Chair
Let me tease your white chest hair
Scaring children, swapping dentures
Let us have some great adventures
Take me to the Dogs and Bingo
Teach me how to speak the lingo
Bone my eels and bring me tea
Show me how it’s meant to be
Take me to your special places
Watching all the puzzled faces
You in shorts and socks and sandals
Me with warts and huge love-handles
As the need for love enthralls
Wrestle with my damp proof smalls
Make me laugh without constraint
Buy me chocolate body paint
Hold me safe throughout the night
When my hair has turned to white
Believe me when I say it’s true
I’ve waited all my life for you
A Vow, by Wendy Cope
I cannot promise never to be angry;
I cannot promise always to be kind.
You know what you are taking on, my darling –
It’s only at the start that love is blind.
And yet I’m still the one you want to be with
And you’re the one for me – of that I’m sure.
You are my closest friend, my favourite person,
The lover and the home I’ve waited for.
I cannot promise that I will deserve you
From this day on. I hope to pass that test.
I love you and I want to make you happy.
I promise I will do my very best.
An Excerpt from a Native American Wedding Ceremony
May the sun bring you new strength by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your fears,
And the breeze invigorates your being,
May you, all the days of your life together,
Walk gently through the world and know it’s beauty.
Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter for the other,
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other,
Now there is no more loneliness,
For each of you will be company for the other,
Now you are two persons,
But there is only one life before you.
Go to your dwelling,
Enter into the days of your life together
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.
Celtic Blessing
May peace guard
The door of your house
The door of your heart
May the road rise to meet you,
And the sun stand at your shoulder
May the wind be always at your back
And the rains fall softly upon your fields
May life itself befriend you
Each day, each night
Each step of your journey.
May peace be with you
And with your children,
From the day that we have here today
To the day of the end of our lives,
Until the day of the end of your lives.
Ancient Sanskrit Poem
Look well to this day, for it is life
The very best of life
In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence
The joy of growth,
The splendour of action,
The glory of power.
For yesterday is but a memory
And tomorrow is only a vision
But today if well-lived,
Makes every yesterday a memory of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope
Look well therefore to this day.
On your wedding day.
Today is a day you will always remember
The greatest in anyone’s life
You’ll start the day just two people in love
And end it as husband and wife.
It’s a brand new beginning, the start of a journey
With moments to cherish and treasure
And although there’ll be times when you disagree
These will surely be outweighed by pleasure.
You’ll have heard many words of advice in the past
When the secrets of marriage were spoken
But you know that the answers lie hidden inside
Where the bond of true love lies unbroken.
So live happy together as lovers and friends
It’s the dawn of a new life for you
As you stand there together with love in your eyes
From the moments you whisper “I do”.
And with luck, all your hopes and your dreams can be real
May success find it’s way to your hearts
Tomorrow can bring you the greatest of joys
But today is the day it all starts.
I Wanna Be Yours, By John Cooper Clarke
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion.
