Are all wedding readings twee or cringeworthy?? Help.

[freeAnneBoleyn]

Because I can’t find even one I like, except the extract from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, which I read out at my grandmother’s funeral... so that’s out.

All the others are either twee horrid things about taking the bins out or doing the washing up, (actually I’m going to have to give an example, it’s by Pam Ayres...)

‘Yes I’ll marry you my dear, you may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble dryer goes, its you that has to mend it’

It just goes on and on like that. It’s truly toe-curling.

Or pretentious. I love DH but I can’t compare him to a summers day, I doubt he’d say I was one either. It’s not a love that has had to endure the horrors of the Somme or Spanish influenza. (Thankfully)

We’re not religious. Nothing there.

I get it’s a public declaration of love and commitment etc but I’m finding the whole thing so wanky I’m horrid, I know, I’m just not outwardly sentimental in the slightest. I don’t want to have to surpress a scoff as it gets read.

DP is making me choose because I’m so bloody picky, he’ll happily just go with it if I actually manage to find one I don’t shred to pieces.

Can anyone tell me what they had at theirs, and why you chose it?

Excuse the lengthy post but couldn’t find a link with just the one reading on. We had this one. Might be a bit too much Pam Ayres though!

Marriage is about giving and taking

And forging and forsaking

Kissing and loving and pushing and shoving

Caring and sharing and screaming and swearing

About being together whatever the weather

About being driven to the end of your tether

About sweetness and kindness

And wisdom and blindness

It's about being strong when you're feeling quite weak

It's about saying nothing when you're dying to speak

It's about being wrong when you know you are right

It's about giving in, before there's a fight

It's about you two living as cheaply as one

(you can give us a call if you know how that's done!)

Never heeding advice that was always well meant

Never counting the cost until it's all spent

And for you two today it's about to begin

And for all that the two of you had to put in

Some days filled with joy, and some days with sadness

Too late you'll discover that marriage is madness.

Oh I’m sorry...I think the Emma Salmon one is the epitome of twee. That’s just my opinion. It’s probably lovely.

Do I have to have one? I’m doing a speech so I’d like some sort of frame. But we met on Tinder. It already lacks the framework of a classic literary match.

Hmmm the Carol Ann Duffy was always one of my faves. I wonder if it’s to risqué. But I do love it.

Write your own? My mum wrote a reading for my wedding.

I like this one, although I suppose it is very slightly twee

I will be here, by Steven Curtis Chapman

“IF IN THE MORNING WHEN YOU WAKE,
IF THE SUN DOES NOT APPEAR,
I WILL BE HERE.
IF IN THE DARK WE LOSE SIGHT OF LOVE,
HOLD MY HAND AND HAVE NO FEAR,
I WILL BE HERE.
I WILL BE HERE,
WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE BEING QUIET,
WHEN YOU NEED TO SPEAK YOUR MIND I WILL LISTEN.
THROUGH THE WINNING, LOSING, AND TRYING WE’LL BE TOGETHER,
AND I WILL BE HERE.
IF IN THE MORNING WHEN YOU WAKE,
IF THE FUTURE IS UNCLEAR,
I WILL BE HERE.
AS SURE AS SEASONS WERE MADE FOR CHANGE,
OUR LIFETIMES WERE MADE FOR YEARS,
I WILL BE HERE.
I WILL BE HERE,
AND YOU CAN CRY ON MY SHOULDER,
WHEN THE MIRROR TELLS US WE’RE OLDER.
I WILL HOLD YOU, TO WATCH YOU GROW IN BEAUTY,
AND TELL YOU ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE TO ME.
WE’LL BE TOGETHER AND I WILL BE HERE.
I WILL BE TRUE TO THE PROMISES I’VE MADE,
TO YOU AND TO THE ONE WHO GAVE YOU TO ME.
I WILL BE HERE.”

Sorry for the shouting, I copied and pasted

sorry missed the link off my previous post

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/booksjadore.com/2014/03/20/the-day-the-saucers-came-neil-gaiman/amp/

Another Neil Gaiman one: at journal.neilgaiman.com/2017/10/wedding-thoughts-all-i-know-about-love.html?m=1

If I was getting married soon this would be my reading.

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.

I really struggled but I found this one that I loved. I had this:

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman
"I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again…I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you…We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams…And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me."

Friends had Scientific Romance by Tim Pratt for their reading. It's really lovely.

(as an aside, is your username a reference to one of the songs in The Long Song?)

It took me ages to find a reading for ours - DH would've had anything, but I find so many of them too long and cringy. DB wanted me to read the dinosaur story but luckily SIL changed it to a slightly less cringe one.

In the end we had my grandmother's favourite sonnet:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

That could work Zog actually. Thank you. I think I could read that without scoffing, cringing or giggling

I’m just not a romantic, clearly....

We had this by Seamus Heaney - Scaffolding
m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/scaffolding

Sorry this is very long.. but I love it and don’t find it too twee. It’s saved on my phone as I read it at a friends wedding and lots of people commented afterwards about how refreshing it was.

“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 to sing it together .

And because in the darkness you reached out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone was even there.
And your hands met,
and now neither of you will ever need to be alone again.

And that's all I know about love.”

How about some song lyrics?

Ooh! The Seamus one is not twee at all!

Ah cross post! Great minds

Could be said to be v.v.v. twee - but also lovely & read well raises a laugh:

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
By Edward Lear
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

E e Cummings - I carry your heart?

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)

Having just read the Seamus Heaney one, I reckon it's the best of the lot.

I think I just worry I’ll be all drama gcse with it and then people will cringe at me

There's too much pussy in the owl and the pussycat for the modern audience imo.

Bob Marley - perfect

I love the John cooper Clarke one

We had the sun has burst the sky which I love, but is possibly a bit twee...

Hmm, I’d find the saying of ‘pussy’ multiple times to a room full of friends and relatives a little problematic