Poem for a wedding. Any ideas

[joelallie]

DH and I are witnessing a friends reg office wedding tomorrow. Big party and blessing type thing on Saturday. I've been asked to read a poem. I'm racking my brains ...and all my poetry books. Everything seems too one-sided...ie poems by lovers about mistresses, or sad, or too syrupy. Does anyone have any brilliant suggestions?

I know it's a bit late but I was only asked the other day.

Thanks

We had this at our wedding

somehwere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e.cummings

does it have to be an actual poem poem, or will a prose reading do?

Off the top of my head the Khalil Gibram one ('the oak and cypress grow not in each other's shadow') and the 'love is a temporary madness' chunk from Captain Corelli are both v popular (and hence often heard).

We had the passage from Under Milk Wood beginning 'I am a draper mad with love' read by our Welsh best man, and a passage from Victor Hugo which I'll hunt down

[rummages]

aha

freely translated from Les Miserables:
Love is part of the soul itself - it is of the same nature.
Like the soul, it is a divine spark; like the soul, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable.
It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish.
We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it shining in the very depths of heaven.
All things are contained in love, and those who love will understand how to find them there.
Without love, the sun itself would falter and grow dark.

I had this read at my wedding

Yes, I'll Marry You
Pam Ayres

Yes, I'll marry you, my dear,
And here's the reason why;
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry,
And if we hear a knocking
And it's creepy and it's late,
I hand you the torch you see,
And you investigate.

Yes I'll marry you, my dear,
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes
It's you that has to mend it,
You have to face the neighbour
Should our labrador attack him,
And if a drunkard fondles me
It's you that has to whack him.

Yes, I'll marry you,
You're virile and you're lean,
My house is like a pigsty
You can help to keep it clean.
That sexy little dinner
Which you served by candlelight,
As I do chipolatas,
You can cook it every night!

It's you who has to work the drill
and put up curtain track,
And when I've got PMT it's you who gets the flak,
I do see great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so before you see the light,
I do, I do, I do!

Brilliant - I love Pam Ayres

Dh was a best man once and offered this as advice to the groom in his speech. It's by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you're wrong, admit it
And whenever you're right - shut up!

We had this one at ours:

I rely on you
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

Thanks all,

in the end we decided to use something that the bride had found - can't remember the exact words but it was lovely. But when we got there the register wouldn't allow us to use it as it had religious overtones - it was some sort of Islamic religious text apparently. Neither would she accept Yeats - the one that says' tread carefully for you tread on my dreams' as that mentioned 'the heavens'....So we had to go with my back up choice - 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds etc etc' What a palaver..

But they had their first choice anyway the next day at their pagan ceremony in a stone circle...