ceremony readings

{via Weddings Tumbler}

Have you asked a friend or relative to read a special passage at your ceremony?  I had always thought we would have "Falling love is a lot like owning a dog" read at ours because we have two furbabies that rule our lives.  I can't remember why I didn't, maybe because it was very popular at weddings that year.  Now looking back...who cares?  We should've read it anyway.

A girlfriend of mine was asked to read at a friend's ceremony so I sent her a few things.  Here are some of my favorites.  You can always cut things down to fit your day, there are no rules...just make sure you give credit where credit is due!



Having A Coke With You by Frank O'Hara



is even more fun than going top San Sebastain, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
 and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the "Polish Rider" occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the "Nude Descending a Staircase" or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it


From "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" by Louise 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 promises 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."


Wedding Song by Bob Dylan


I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love
I love you more than money and more than the stars above
I love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea
I love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me.

Ever since you walked right in the circle's been complete
I've said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street
In the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun


I love you more than ever and I haven't yet begun.

You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live
When I was deep in powerty you taught me how to give
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole

I love you more than ever and it binds me to this all.

You gave me babies, one, two, three, what is more, you saved my life
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth, your love cuts like a knife
My thoughts of you don't ever rest, they'd kill me if I lie
But I'd sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die.


The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth
We'll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth
What's lost is lost, we can't regain what went down in the flood


But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood.

It's never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge
'Cause I love you more than all of that with a love that doesn't bend


And if there is eternity I'd love you there again.

Oh, can't you see that you were born to stand by my side
And I was born to be with you, you were born to be my bride
You're the other half of what I am, you're the missing piece
and I love you more than ever with that love that doesn't cease.


You turn the tide on me each day and teach my eyes to see
Just being next to you is a natural thing for me
and I could never let you go, no matter what goes on


'Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.


I also love these short ones by E.E. Cummings:
May my heart always be open to little
You being in love
One's not half, its two are half of one