Wedding reading suggestions

[Timetospare]

Hi, I’ve been asked to select and read something at a wedding this September
They are getting married in their local church, and the vicar wants to ‘approve’ it but it doesn’t necessarily need to be religious. Bride has given me free reign for suggestions, I’m used to public speaking, but don’t want anything too twee.

Any suggestions for something warm hearted, maybe funny? Thanks

I don't have any suggestions other than Shakespeare's Sonnet 115 as a change from the usual 116, but am just saying don't, for the love of God, choose the bit from Captain Corelli's Mandolin that seems to have bobbed up everywhere as a go to wedding reading. Once you've actually read the novel, it's not exactly a recommendation.

Thanks, I was on a wedding site that also suggested a reading from Sylvia Plath, extolling the virtues of her husband Ted Hughes. That didn’t end well.

We had religious ones, so probably not relevant (though do look beyond corointhians - Song of Solomon is beautiful and passionate love poetry!) but I'm another one who definitely thinks nooooo on the captain Corelli one. I don't think anyone should aspire to a relationship where there is no passion or romance any more but you are so enmeshed that that is it for you and I think that this is at least how it can be read!

Seriously???

Sorry, was laughing at the Plath on Hughes idea, not Corinthians or Song of Solomon.

It is incredibly poignant seeing she was married to a shit

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around anymore: I don’t need to look around for anything.

Offbeat Bride has some lovely readings and poems. I found ours there after nearly despairing after all the suggestions of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and others that were just too twee for us.

Something like this from Neil Gaiman?

This for you, for both of you,

a small poem of happiness
filled with small glories and little triumphs
a fragile, short cheerful song
filled with hope and all sorts of futures

Because at weddings we imagine the future
Because it's all about "what happened next?"
all the work and negotiation and building and talk
that makes even the tiniest happily ever after
something to be proud of for a wee forever

This is a small thought for both of you
like a feather or a prayer,
a wish of trust and love and hope
and fine brave hearts and true.

Like a tower, or a house made all of bones and dreams
and tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows

I think we had song of Solomon. Although there is a rather racy part where it talks about young deer copulating!

We had Song of Solomon too - absolutely divine, but you have to be dramatic in your reading of it.

@trackydacks oh that could work, will look at your offbeat bride suggestion too.

We had a reading of Kurt Vonnegut 'If this isn't nice I don't know what is':

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."

And the other was Margaret Attwood 'Habitation':
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire

We had Song of Solomon too and my friend delivered it so beautifully - she’s great at public speaking!

We had two - Song of Solomon for our religious one and The Way Your Face Lights Up by John Osborn for the non-religious one:

The way your face lights up

I love the way your face lights up
when I go to the supermarket to buy milk but come back with a bottle of wine
and two packets of Minstrels
and I love the way that when you apologise
you do it without saying anything
instead you’ll bake flapjacks
or leave the door open when you’re having a bath and it’s just your way of saying sorry
for not posting that letter you said you’d post or for leaving the immersion heater on all night
and I love the way your face freezes
like the portrait of The Scream
when you panic you've left your purse on the bus or realise you’ve forgotten a friend’s birthday and have to rush to John Lewis
to buy a novelty photo frame.
I've seen the way your face drops
when you're about to go out and it starts to rain
or when you hear on the radio someone you like has died like Heath Ledger or Tony Hart
and I love the way you roll your eyes
when you know that I’m not paying attention
when you’re telling me about your day
but I’m trying to listen to Richard Bacon on Five Live
and I knew that what we had was special
when I woke you up at five in the morning to say
‘Look at the beautiful sunrise’
and you told me to shut up and go back to sleep
because I realised we didn’t have to try so hard any more. I love the way your face lights up when I walk into a room and the way I can imagine your face lights up
when I've been away and phone to say
I’ll be home soon.

My friend had this reading at her wedding

On Marriage
BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
Then Almitra spoke again and said, And
what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you
shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white
wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance
between you.

 Love one another, but make not a bond

of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

 Give your hearts, but not into each

other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain
your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near
together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.

Shared jokes?
We had lots of readings but this one makes me smile the most in retrospect:
I rely on you, by Hovis Presley.
Works best if you have a friend or family member from the North who can do flat vowels and pronounces scone rhyming with gone.

http://www.hovispresley.co.uk/somepoems.htmll http://www.hovispresley.co.uk/someepoems.html

What about this.
Maybe

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.

So exciting, thank you all for the suggestions.Lots to look at.

Sadly I can’t do the Kahlil Gibran one as I read it at her mother’s first wedding to a man who turned out to be a physically aggressive bastard.
Her mother happily remarried, and the bride to be is her daughter, but tragically the second husband ( and bride’s dad) died suddenly a few years ago.

We had this which is quite random but sweet and nice to read:

Hinterhof, by James Fenton

Stay near to me and I’ll stay near to you -

As near as you are dear to me will do,

Near as the rainbow to the rain,

The west wind to the windowpane,
As fire to the hearth, as dawn to dew.

Stay true to me and I’ll stay true to you -

As true as you are new to me will do,

New as the rainbow in the spray,

Utterly new in every way,
New in the way that what you say is true.

Stay near to me, stay true to me. I’ll stay

As near, as true to you as heart could pray.
Heart never hoped that one might be


Half of the things you are to me -

The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day.

C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity, titled "on marriage". It has a nod to religion (obviously) but isn't Biblical.

(to 12:00)

Vow

by Roger McGough

I vow to honour the commitment made this day
Which, unlike the flowers and the cake,
Will not wither or decay. A promise, not to obey
But to respond joyfully, to forgive and to console,
For once incomplete, we now are whole.

I vow to bear in mind that if, at times
Things seem to go from bad to worse,
They also go from bad to better.
The lost purse is handed in, the letter
Contains wonderful news. Trains run on time,
Hurricanes run out of breath, floods subside,
And toast lands jam-side up.

And with this ring, my final vow:
To recall, whatever the future may bring,
The love I feel for you now.

John Cooper Clarke

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