to ask you what readings you DON'T hear very often at weddings??

[nomorearsingmermaids]

Posted for traffic. Need to choose a wedding reading (civil ceremony) and looking for something that isn't read at every single wedding.

I like that Edward Monkton one about the dinosaurs but I've heard that one a lot in recent years.

Help?

We had this and I still love it

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seems to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Seamus Heaney

@waffles80 are you me?! Love that one.

Being Boring by Wendy Cope

May you live in interesting times.’ –Chinese curse

If you ask me ‘What’s new?’, I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it’s better today.
I’m content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.
There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I’ve used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don’t need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,
I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

We had this by Louise Cuddon but completely customised it to reflect us. So things like Aldi and camping and netflix were mentioned

ENU

Wedding Readings ~ I’ll Be There For You, by Louise Cuddon
I’ll be there, my darling, through thick and through thin
When your mind’s in a mess and your head’s in a spin
When your plane’s been delayed, and you’ve missed the last train.
When life is just threatening to drive you insane
When your thrilling whodunit has lost its last page
When somebody tells you, you’re looking your age
When your coffee’s too cool, and your wine is too warm
When the forecast said, “Fine,” but you’re out in a storm
When your quick break hotel, turns into a slum
And your holiday photos show only your thumb

When you park for five minutes in a resident’s bay

And return to discover you’ve been towed away
When the jeans that you bought in hope or in haste
Just stick on your hips and don’t reach round your waist
When the food you most like brings you out in red rashes
When as soon as you boot up the bloody thing crashes
So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear…
When you break a rule, when you act the fool
When you’ve got the flu, when you’re in a stew
When you’re last in the queue, don’t feel blue
’cause I’m telling you, I’ll be there.

We had this:

A MARRIAGE
By Michael Blumenthal

You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.

But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.

I've never heard it at another wedding!

These are all beautiful, I loved “The Promise”! We’re meant to be having “I Like You” at ours but considering both now

Tarot?

Haha we had the dinosaurs too but over 10 years ago. I like to think we were the first

Also had Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven by Yeats, though I had to change the title to ‘Tread Softly’ to get it past the registrar.

The lyrics to Black Eyed Peas' My Humps read slowly and solemnly... preferably by William Shatner.

I had 'We are made one by what we touch and see' by Oscar Wilde - Vicar didn't like it. He didn't like my hymns either I had to barter.

We had The Confirmation as mentioned by PP and Fidelity by DH Lawrence.

I chose a slightly tweaked version of "Oh! The places you'll go!" (So it worked read to a couple) and my hubby's godfather read it without hubby knowing what the reading would be.

An Excerpt from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

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.

Maybe take a leaf out of Nessa’s book in Gavin & Stacey and go for ‘Stop all the clocks’.....

I'm looking for non religious poems and readings too. I keep seeing the same ones on online articles (Spyglass, Captain Corelli), so it's good to get some more ideas!

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45169/song-from-arcadia-my-true-love-hath-my-heart-
Sir Philip Sidney.

My brother had something lovely and sophisticated but somewhat baffling by John Donne. A small DD said in a stage whisper “I don’t understand what he’s saying!” half way through, to disapproval but covert agreement from the rest of the congregation.

Scientific Romance by Tim Pratt
I like you (as above)
This by Caitlin Moran:

If there is joy, or progress, or enlightenment, or love to be had, it must be had now: between your birth and your death; as fast and fiercely as you can. All we have it the breath in our bodies and a finite share of seconds, and each one must be spent with the same joyous reverence as a gold coin. This is because, at 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.”
In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing - not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over.
Each baby, then, is a unique collision - a cocktail, a remix - of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms.
When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes - we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it [thinking something better will happen when it ends]. Don’t you dare.

We missed out the bit in brackets out of respect for the religious in-laws.