Suggestions for a wedding reading, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a wedding where they read an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit. Sorry, I don't remember the exact passage.

I also went to a wedding where they read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 that The Byrds turned into a song (Turn, Turn, Turn . . . To every thing there is a season . . . ).

Haha, I was just going to post "Please not that passage from The Velveteen Rabbit!" That has been read at the last three weddings I have been to (literally, at every single one). It's lovely but overdone. I do like that e.e. cummings poem posted upthread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ruth 1:16-17

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

But if anyone knows the bible they will know the context from which this is taken is wrong for the situation. This is Ruth talking to another woman, her mother-in-law, Naomi.

People who saw "Fried Green Tomatoes" will also know this.

[Anonymous]

Rumi

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
BY PABLO NERUDA
TRANSLATED BY MARK EISNER

...I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

That's so funny, this is the poem I was going to suggest!

[Anonymous]

Maya Angelou's "Touched by an Angel."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ruth 1:16-17

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

But if anyone knows the bible they will know the context from which this is taken is wrong for the situation. This is Ruth talking to another woman, her mother-in-law, Naomi.

People who saw "Fried Green Tomatoes" will also know this.

But it is often read at weddings because Ruth chose to make her MIL her family, in the way that two people who are marrying choose to make a family together. That Ruth and Naomi are both women is kind of beside the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ruth 1:16-17

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

But if anyone knows the bible they will know the context from which this is taken is wrong for the situation. This is Ruth talking to another woman, her mother-in-law, Naomi.

People who saw "Fried Green Tomatoes" will also know this.

But it is often read at weddings because Ruth chose to make her MIL her family, in the way that two people who are marrying choose to make a family together. That Ruth and Naomi are both women is kind of beside the point.

Be cautious of making such statements in front of MIL.

[Anonymous]

A Word to Husbands

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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a wedding where they read an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit. Sorry, I don't remember the exact passage.

I also went to a wedding where they read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 that The Byrds turned into a song (Turn, Turn, Turn . . . To every thing there is a season . . . ).

Haha, I was just going to post "Please not that passage from The Velveteen Rabbit!" That has been read at the last three weddings I have been to (literally, at every single one). It's lovely but overdone. I do like that e.e. cummings poem posted upthread.

Haha, I'm the quoted PP. I've only heard it at that one, so didn't realize it's overdone! I, too, really like that e.e. cummings poem.

[Anonymous]

The Master Speed

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Robert Frost wrote this poem for his daughter's wedding.

[Anonymous]

We used this at our wedding. It's from Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season:

"Ultimately there comes a time when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling."

[Anonymous]

Get up and do the "mawwage" scene from the princess bride, complete with the speech impediment.

[Anonymous]

One of my faves:

“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 promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. 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.”
? Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get up and do the "mawwage" scene from the princess bride, complete with the speech impediment.

I am not kidding when I tell you a new minister decided to open with that at my friends wedding. I thought it was HILARIOUS, however the 70% of the audience, who was 60+ at the time, did not.