Non-biblical reading

Think this one is rather good -

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.'

What about writing one yourself?

We are having a civil ceremony (I don't go to church). We have one poem written by my OHs auntie which is personal to us & we have the reading 'On your wedding day'.

Adamjcollins that's brilliant, just the sort of thing I've been looking for. I may have to steal. X

I say think about the things that mean something to you as a couple and go from there - it doesn't have to be a poem or a story. We had two readings - one was the lyrics of a song by a band that we went to see a lot when we were first together (now sadly defunct) and the other a poem that appeared in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (very dear to our hearts). They were romantic wihtout being soppy and they had real meaning to us.

I've been saving any I like in to a word file ... copied and pasted below, sorry about the massive post!!

----

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-----

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

----

From "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams
"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?"

"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 the 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."

----

From "Gift From The Sea" by 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.

----

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

-Albert Einstein

----

"Yes, I'll Marry You," by 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!

----

"Foxtrot From a Play," by W H Auden

The soldier loves his rifle,

The scholar loves his books,

The farmer loves his horses,

The film star loves her looks.

There's love the whole world over

Wherever you may be;

Some lose their rest for gay Mae West,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some talk of Alexander

And some of Fred Astaire,

Some like their heroes hairy

Some like them debonair,

Some prefer a curate

And some an A.D.C.,

Some like a tough to treat'em rough,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some are mad on Airedales

And some on Pekinese,

On tabby cats or parrots

Or guinea pigs or geese.

There are patients in asylums

Who think that they're a tree;

I had an ant who loved a plant,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some have sagging waistlines

And some a bulbous nose

And some a floating kidney

And some have hammer toes,

Some have tennis elbow

And some have housemaid's knee,

And some I know have got B.O.,

But you're my cup of tea.

The blackbird loves the earthworm,

The adder loves the sun,

The polar bear an iceberg,

The elephant a bun,

The trout enjoys the river,

The whale enjoys the sea,

And dogs love most an old lamp-post,

But you're my cup of tea.

----

Marriage is about giving and taking

And forging and forsaking

Kissing and loving and pushing and shoving

Caring and Sharing and screaming and swearing

About being together whatever the weather

About being driven to the end of your tether

About Sweetness and kindness

And wisdom and blindness

It's about being strong when you're feeling quite weak

It's about saying nothing when you're dying to speak

It's about being wrong when you know you are right

It's about giving in, before there's a fight

It's about you two living as cheaply as one

(you can give us a call if you know how that's done!)

Never heeding advice that was always well meant

Never counting the cost until it's all spent

And for you two today it's about to begin

And for all that the two of you had to put in

Some days filled with joy, and some days with sadness

Too late you'll discover that marriage is madness.

----

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.

Hitched has some suggestions on wedding poems here: https://www.hitched.co.uk/speeches/poems/poemshome.aspx and there are some more lighthearted ideas here: http://offbeatbride.com/2011/06/silly-wedding-readings#.Uyriw_l_tqU

But as everyone's said, if there's something that means something to the two of you then that's the best place to start. Even if it's a sad poem/ song, you might look at other things by the same artist/ poet to find something wedding appropriate?