Readings at weddings

[garlictwist]

I'm getting married! This is most unexpected as I've been with DP 15 years and we didn't think we'd bother but here we are and I find myself quite excited.

My mother is also excited. She is wading in day and night with her thoughts and opinions on the matter. She is insistent one must have readings at the ceremony.

I appreciate that without readings it's relatively brief (a bonus, in my opinion). But I am open to considering it.

I guess if you have readings you want them to be personal to you rather than just some generic sonnet but nothing really is. And everything I've googled seems cheesy AF.

Did you have readings? Any good ones? Will it be weird and short if we just do the "I dos"?

Yes, it manages to be sickeningly twee and incredibly sexist at the same time. Girl dinosaurs’ minds skip around and they’re obsessed with shopping, while boy dinosaurs are ‘distant’ and think about ‘Things’ (clearly the girl dinosaurs’ skippy little minds don’t consider big Things that get a capital letter).

If some had read that out at our wedding, my friends would have staged an intervention on the grounds that I had been replaced by an impostor.

Oh god - sorry for whoever recommended it, but the Dinosaur poem 😳😳😳
If you have children in your nice, pls see this through the sexist lens that it is,

Men = clever and fierce
Women = pretty and fragrant and fanciful

OP - stick with the Ben lyrics. Rats are much more equality-based!

We had a reading and we didn't have anything special in mind so we just chose one from googling. We chose the Captain Morelli's Mandolin one. We both liked it and SIL read it for us so that was nice. It wasn't special before but it is now because it reminds us of our wedding day.

We had several (bookish) but my favourite one was 'I rely on you' by Hovis Presley. It only works if the reader uses northern flat vowels, rhymes scone with gone and has enough confidence to do justice to an 80s beat poem.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=i+rely+on+you+by+hovis+presley&client=safari&scaesv=598160927&channel=iphoneebm&source=hp&ei=HJyiZeGJO-a2hbIP1fKJwAo&oq=I+Tely+on+You&gslp=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&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-hp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:8947be3a,vid:1J8Mc3f3Djk,st:0

gawd nothing by Michael Jackson

I have done a few wedding readings and this is my favourite

I Rely on You by Hovis Presley

I rely on you
like a Skoda needs suspension
like the aged need a pension
like a trampoline needs tension
like a bungee jump needs apprehension
I rely on you
like a camera needs a shutter
like a gambler needs a flutter
like a golfer needs a putter
like a buttered scone involves some butter
I rely on you
like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
like an HGV needs endless derv
like an outside left needs a body swerve
I rely on you
like a handyman needs pliers
like an auctioneer needs buyers
like a laundromat needs driers
like The Good Life needed Richard Briers
I rely on you
like a water vole needs water
like a brick outhouse needs mortar
like a lemming to the slaughter
Ryan’s just Ryan without his daughter
I rely on you

I see a PP a recommend but w caveat - don’t have northern vowels and I think it was fine.

I had “wild awake” by Hilary T Smith. Short, to the point and relevant

People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn't know were there, even the ones they wouldn't have thought to call beautiful themselves.

Oh god this all the way!! My sister’s friend was determined to muscle in on things and this was how she was managed

We had 3 readings at ours.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 which is the first of his sonnets I fell in love with as a teenager.

One by Philip Pullman from The Amber Spyglass. If you google Philip Pullman wedding reading it always comes up. We liked that it was a little different to some of the ones you see.

Then my DC read Your Personal Penguin which was a surprise for DH and it led to one of my favourite wedding photos as he hates penguins and he's giving me a "really?" face while I'm trying not to burst out laughing at his face while the kids were reading it.