Non soppy and vomit inducing civil ceremony readings....impossible?

[Indith]

Pretty much everything makes me want to throw up. There is cute stuff from Winnie the Pooh, very cute yes but having it read at my wedding would make me want to stick my head down the loo. There are all those "marriage advice/marriage cake" type things...yuck, there are sickly sweet "I love you let us fly on a carpet of dreams together for ever and ever my dearest darling" type things. More vomit.

I adore poems like this one by Pushkin

I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;
I have no wish to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you wordlessly, without a hope,
By shyness tortured, or by jealousy.
I loved you with such tenderness and candor
And pray God grants you to be loved that way again.

I love folk music and can think of quite a few lyrics that I adore/are moving but the trouble with folky love songs is they tend to be quite tragic, young men going off to sea/dying in wars/fathers locking their daughters up and quietly getting rid of the unsuitable true love etc.

I have 2 maybes that I have yet to run by dp. One is from Captain Corelli which has stuck with me ever since I first read it as a teenager and the other is sonnet 116 but that always makes me think of Marianne being all impulsive and still dreaming of being swept off her feet rather than allowing love to grow.

Go on, there are some well read people around here, any suggestions?

Hovis presley?

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

© H Presley 1994

Effie that is my other maybe that makes me think of Marianne Dashwood.

Laugs I know, so beautiful but not at all suitable. Got to love Pushkin.

lol mmj

Am getting behind on my reading. May have to take a break, all the romance is merging into one big pink bog in my brain.

Ok I'm off to eat chocolatestare at something other than my computer screen. Thanks for all the suggestions

Friends of ours had The Owl and the Pussy Cat which turned out to be read so beautifully it was just fabulous. They had a humanist ceremony.

Ok - its not especially cultured but the one we're having says what we want without being too soppy (I hope). We're also having Captain Correlli's

'Maybe...We are supposed to meet the wrong people before meeting the right one so that, when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift

Maybe...it is true that we don't know what we have got until we lose it, but it is also true that we don't know what we have been missing until it arrives.

Maybe...the happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

Maybe...the best kind of love is the kind you can sit on a sofa together and never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had

Maybe...you shouldn't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile, because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

Maybe...you should hope for enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, and enough hope to make you happy.

Maybe... Love is not about finding the perfect person, it's about learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.'

we wrote our own

got married on 7th July 2007

friend wrote one based on the legend of tanabata

i wrote a piece about being lucky

love them both (wish i had a copy somewhere though

or what about lyrics to songs?

I chose the readers, then let the readers choose their own material. I recommend it. YOu get a surprise on your wedding day and maybe a laugh too!
MY lot chose
a/keats
b/shakespeare
c/Cold Comfort Farm
c/Morcambe & Wise, Bring Me Sunshine.
Each reading reflected our reader's personality and their view of our relationship ahnd it was so enjoyable and moving.

Mind you, if you are young and have no elderly rellies, this will just baffle them!

Bring me Sunshine, in your smile,
Bring me Laughter, all the while,
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness,
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow,

Make me happy, through the years,
Never bring me, any tears,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Bring me Sunshine, in your eyes,
Bring me rainbows, from the skies,
Life's too short to be spent having anything but fun,
We can be so content, if we gather little sunbeams,

Be light-hearted, all day long,
Keep me singing, happy songs,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

by Keats;
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever or else swoon to death.

OK, how about...
Sir Philip Sidney: The Bargain

My true love hath my heart and I have his
By just exchange, one for the other given
I hold his dear and mine he cannot miss
THere never was a better bargain driven

Or Auden (especially good for a civil partnership)
O Tell me the truth about love (though you might want to dump the first verse as it begins 'SOme say it's a little boy')
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas
Or the ham in a temperance hotel
Does its odor remind one of llamas
Or has it a comforting smell?

Or one of my favourites, sometimes called the Code-Poem

We had this:

i carry your heart with me

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 the 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)

ee cummings

i love that ee cummings one

(espesh since one-handed no-upper-case typing due to bf is turning me all a bit cummings-esque too! )

This is another nice one (though the verse about nighties might need to be skipped for a civil ceremony between men. Or not.)
Also the first four or so verses are quite good as a reading because they don't sound entirely like they are from one partner to another, which is sometimes a good thing if the reading is being read by someone else.

We had a slightly altered version of Dr Suess 'Oh the places you'll go'' Very appropriate for us, also together ages with 1 DD and another baby on the way when we got married.
Stiil makes me that we had Dr Suess read at our wedding

"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.

----

"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.

----

from Gift From The Sea (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

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.

We didn't have a reading - you don't have to either.... especially if it will make you sick!!!!!!

There's an entertaining John Cooper Clarke number called something like 'I wanna be yours' that includes the immortal lines 'let me be your Ford Cortina, I will never rust/let me be your vaccum cleaner, I will eat your dust' (IIRC)

And I really like "A Dedication to My Wife" by T.S. Eliot

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are my private words addressed to you in public.

except that it seems a bit tainted by the fact that, actually, he was a bit of a shit to his first wife (not sure to which wife this was addressed).

this is an edit of the 1/2 chapter in julian barnes "history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters". i read it at my brother's wedding and it made me cry...

Don?t get me wrong. I?m not recommending one form of love over another. I don?t know if prudent or reckless love is the better, monied or penniless love the surer, married or unmarried love the stronger. I may be tempted toward didacticism, but this isn?t an advice column. I can?t tell you whether or not you?re in love. If you need to ask, you probably aren?t, that?s my only advice (and even this might be wrong). I can?t tell you who to love, or how to love. But I can tell you why to love. Because the history of the world is ridiculous without it. The history of the world becomes brutally self-important without love. Love wont change the history of the world, but it does allow us to stand up to it. Of course we don?t fall in love to selflessly help out with the world?s ego problems; yet this is one of love?s surer effects.

Love and truth, that?s the vital connection, love and truth. Have you ever told so much truth as when you were first in love? Have you ever seen the world so clearly? Love makes us see the truth, makes it our duty to tell the truth. And it?s a moral duty: tell the truth with your body even if ? especially if ? the truth isn?t melodramatic. How you cuddle in the dark governs how you see the history of the world. It?s as simple as that.

I?m searching for the right comparison. Love and truth, yes, that?s the prime connection. We all know objective truth is not obtainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a myriad of subjective stories, which we make into history. But while we know this, we still must believe objective truth is obtainable, or 99% obtainable at least.

And so it is with love. We must believe in it, or we?re lost. We may not obtain it, or we may obtain it and find it renders us unhappy, or it may make us the happiest people alive ? but we must still believe in it. If we don?t then we merely surrender to the history of the world, and to someone else?s truth.

Seamus Heaney's SCAFFOLDINGis good:

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 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.

and the John Cooper Clarke Ford Cortina one (in full) is:
I Wanna Be Yours
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust,
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust,
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot,
You call the shots,
I wanna be yours.

I wanna be your raincoat
For those frequent rainy days,
I wanna be your dreamboat
When you want to sail away,
Let me be your teddy bear
Take me with you anywhere,
I don?t care,
I wanna be yours.

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out,
I wanna be the electric heater
You?ll get cold without,
I wanna be your setting lotion
Hold your hair in deep devotion,
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
That?s how deep is my devotion.

oh I love the idea of the places you'll go - I'm nicking that for our vow renewal!

halia - I'll try and find it if you want. It was a bit of a precis.

Rilke is very good on love - there might be something in here that you could use.

I was ging to suggest the Hovis Presley poem too, but I see Habbibu has got there first.

I read this

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Louis de Bernieres

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.

We had Phillip Sidney's The Bargain at our (religious) ceremony. The full thing's here

I love the Gift from the Sea already quoted(Anne Morrow Lidbergh) Also this one

One recognises the truth of Saint Exupery's line: Love does not consist in gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction. For in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they are working outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base....Here one makes oneself part of the community of men, of human society. Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too, a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.

we had this

Atlas
by U.A. Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn?t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

we loved it because it was amusing but also eloquently described what marriage is really about - not just love and passion but day to day looking after each other. and at the same time it is a well-constructed poem and sounded great when read aloud.