I love reading. Seriously love it. Since I was a tiny girl of 4 years old, you would rarely have found me without a book in hand. My mother even tells the story of how I would be vacuuming with one hand while reading with the other when she asked me to help out around the house. So naturally, I am putting a lot of thought into the decision of what words I want read at our wedding.
Because we are designing our own ceremony with the help of our officiant, we have free rein on what types of readings we want to include in the ceremony. So the easiest decision: No 1 Corinthians: 13. No way. I can’t help it, every time I think of that reading, I think of the movie Wedding Crashers!
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My preference is to not use any biblical readings at all, but I realized that I didn’t really know any wedding readings other than those. Luckily, my obsessive blog reading paid off by leading me to several possibilities, and google filled in plenty more.
The first reading I fell in love with I discovered reading about Mrs. Shortcake’s wedding on Weddingbee.
Union by Robert Fulghum
You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.
The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”
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.
For after today you shall say to the world –
This is my husband. This is my wife.
I love Robert Fulghum’s books (I have a dog-eared copy of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten sitting on my bookshelf) and I love the honest, serious tone of this reading. Mr. Bolt and I often daydream about our future and where we’ll be and what we’ll do, so that part really resonated with me as well.
I stumbled upon this poem by Taylor Mali reading about Kate’s wedding. I loved it because Rich and I have a crazy, annoying, high strung, but much loved dog, Ren.
Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali
First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.
Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.
Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!
Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.
But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.
This reading is the one I mentioned in the title that would push my mom over the edge. She, despite owning a lovely german shepherd, considers Rich and me to be crazy pet people (we do have two cats in addition to Ren). Add in the fact that we have some other pet-related touches up for debate in the wedding, and I think this reading would be the breaking point.
Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernières is a book I’ve adored since a friend recommended it to me before Organic Chemistry class one day in college. This passage from the book is another lovely piece of writing that would be marvelous in our wedding.
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 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 blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
I’m very drawn to wedding readings that have almost a pragmatic tone to them, not because I don’t love Rich madly and passionately, but because I love him on a deep practical lifetime partner way as well. Another reading along those lines is from another much beloved author of mine, Madeleine L’Engle, from her book “The Irrational Season.”
But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.
Of course, all wedding readings don’t have to be serious. I adore the poetry of E.E. Cummings, and if I had to choose one of his poems for my wedding it would probably be “since feeling is first.” I remember reading this poem in tenth grade english and liking it even then!
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
And one last possibility, very light hearted since it is a children’s book, I Like You, by Sandol Stoddard Warburg. You can read the entire book at that link, but it’s quite long so if I were using it I would probably excerpt it like this:
I like you because I don’t know why but
Everything that happens is nicer with you
I can’t remember when I didn’t like you
It must have been lonesome then
I like you because because because
I forget why I like you but I do
So many reasons
I would go on choosing you
And you would go on choosing me
Over and over again
That’s how it would happen every time
I don’t know why
I guess I don’t know why I really like you
Why do I like you
I guess I just like you
I guess I just like you because I like you.
So many possibilities! Since we don’t want to trap our guests in their seats for hours, I guess we won’t be using all of them, but in a perfect world we would. Hopefully Rich and I can narrow it down to a few favorites before we meet with our officiant in January.
Which reading is your favorite of these? Where did you look to get readings for your wedding?
