Asked to do a reading at a wedding, what to do?

[TheDuchess]

Oh, please help!

I've been asked to read at my father's wedding. Am clueless, what can I read? It is a registry office wedding so can't have anything religious and I'd feel personally uncomfortable with something too romantic.

Help....

I read out WH Audens "O Tell me the Truth ABout Love" at my frinds registry do. IF you put the title in Google it should come up with it. Its not too slushy and not religious. Went down a Storm!

Ooh, thanks. Am off to google.

There's a nice Adrian Henri poem called "Love is" which is short and gently funny, there's the classic Shakespeare sonnet 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment'... Go and have a look at the British Humanist Association website, where there's a quite a few suggestions for wedding poetry with no religious elements. Can't advice you in much detail without knowing a bit more about your dad and his b2b but hope that helps
(I'm a humanist wedding celebrant BTW)

our library is full of love poetry books so you may find what you need in your library

oh you might need to check with the registry office first - we thought about a reading from the prophet but it was not allowed at that time

My father is in his late fifties and he doesn't really do serious. He would enjoy a humourous poem very much. However my stepmother to be would probably want something romantic.

I do like "O Tell me the truth about love" but it is maybe a bit too long. I read it to my DH and his eyes glazed over a bit towards the end.

And I thought finding a dress was tough...

When I read "O Tell me the Truth About Love" I forgot to say that I edited it and cut a couple of the verses out.

Apologies WH Auden!

Does it have to be a poem? - I remember a reading where a bit of Lord of the Rings fitted the bill admirably (because it was a long-standing, slightly joke, family favourite).

Wedding reading ought ideally to be exactly relevant to the individuals rather than something generically suited to the occasion ... tell us more about your dad? What are his favourite writers/things? Or your stepmother-to-be, what does she like?

(That ought to have said "I remember a wedding [not a 'reading']")

I remember another wedding where I read a bit of Spenser's "Epithalamion" (or "Prothalamion", one or t'other) and had to refer to the bride & groom as a "blest pair of swans" which was a little tricky to do with a straight face.

Here's a nice short one, by Ogden Nash (which I may have slightly botched the wording of as this is from memory..)

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
WHenever you're wrong, admit it
Whenever you're right, shut up.

THat's a short one but it still might be nice if you surround it with a little speech about your dad and his new wife or an anecdote... a reading doesn't have to be written by SOmeone Famous. IF you are good at verse, you could write your own .
(Frankly, if you're crap at verse but loved by your family any stuff you write yourself will still go down well.)

We had a bit from The Velveteen Rabbit:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" [Ed: we edited that bit slightly (cut out "inside you") because of the snigger potential]

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

And the Ogden Nash...

I also like

"Marriage Advice" (Jane Wells)

Let your love be stronger than your hate or anger.

Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than to break.

Believe the best rather than the worst.
People have a way of living up or down to your opinion of them.

Remember that true friendship is the basis for any lasting relationship. The person you choose to marry is deserving of the courtesies and kindnesses you bestow on your friends.

Please hand this down to your children and your children's children.

(you might want to cut out the last sentence, as it's you handing it up in the first place...)

"Marriage Joins Two People In The Circle Of Its Love" (Edmund O'Neill)

Marriage is a commitment to life, the best that two people can find and bring out in each other. It offers opportunities for sharing and growth that no other relationship can equal. It is a physical and an emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime.

Within the circle of its love, marriage encompasses all of life's most important relationships. A wife and a husband are each other's best friend, confidant, lover, teacher, listener, and critic. And there may come times when one partner is heartbroken or ailing, and the love of the other may resemble the tender caring of a parent for a child.

Marriage deepens and enriches every facet of life. Happiness is fuller, memories are fresher, commitment is stronger, even anger is felt more strongly, and passes away more quickly.

Marriage understands and forgives the mistakes life is unable to avoid. It encourages and nurtures new experiences and new ways of expressing a love that is deeper than life.

When two people pledge their love and care for each other in marriage, they create a spirit unique unto themselves which binds them closer than any spoken or written words. Marriage is a promise, a potential made in the hearts of two people who love each other and takes a lifetime to fulfil.

And a passage from Gift From The Sea (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) -- I liked this, but DH didn't

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

lemonaid I had that one at my wedding

I like the one from Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

I read the 'Gift from the sea' text - it was really really lovely. I was nervous as hell abut managed to read it slowly and calmly and I have to say I had loads of comments afterwards saying it was a lovely reading. I think it's lovely as it is not to wishy washy and not too complicated, it seemed to 'make sense' to everyone.

Good luck.

Ooh lemonaid I like that Gift from the Sea one. Do you know its copyright status? I know you can read anything you like during weddings as it's a 'private' occasion but I was thinking that particular one might be good to put on my website seeing as I specialise in alternative weddings and that would be quite a good one for an unconventional (ie open marriage) ceremony...

She didn't die until 2001, so it'll still be within copyright -- and although it's an extract from a longer work you wouldn't be using it for purposes of criticism or review, so you'd probably need permission (not that that seems to have stopped the host of websites that do include it... although it's possible that they have all secured permission, I suppose [doubtful emoticon]).

the velveteen rabbit one made me cry - there was an article in easy living about a woman whose sister died and she read that to her so best not i think !!

Thanks everyone. Some good stuff here. I'm not sure why I though of a poem. I don't particularly want to write something Deep and Meaningful. My father left my mother for his new wife-to-be and frankly I'm not sure I could find anything particularly heartfelt to say.

Obviously I am happy for them but I couldn't bring myself to talk about marriage etc being forever or everlasting because for them it clearly isn't. I do need to find something I will be comfortable with and which is fit for the circumstances.

Gosh, this sounds a bit self-centred. I don't mean to be.

Loved the Ogden Nash verse. We had this on our wedding invitations.