I have a special favor to ask of you all literary cats. My fiancee and I have settled on our wedding song, “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher”, a brilliant choice in my view, you can’t go wrong with Jackie Wilson. And we’ve replaced one wedding reading with a song — “One Hand, One Heart” — but I think we need to have one actual reading.
Any suggestions?
piratedan
yeah tho I walk through the valley of shadow….oops, wrong occasion….
The Fat Kate Middleton
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Jewish Steel
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
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 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)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Let it all hang out- Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses.
Trollhattan
From the Book of Mix-a-Lot, Chapter the First:
“I like big butts and I can not lie.
You other brothers can’t deny.”
Has more impact spoken than sung, generally.
Also, too, congratulations!
DougJ
@Jewish Steel:
My fiancee likes that one.
Jewish Steel
@Jewish Steel:
Although, I had a hard time keeping it together during that reading. And I am not the weepy type.
longtimelurker
John Galt’s speech from Atlas Shrugged!
BGinCHI
Here is what we read at our wedding. We are probably the only couple in recorded history to do so, but that’s what you get when English Profs marry each other.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/237912#poem
Philip Larkin, “An Arundel Tomb”
Francisco The Man
Das Kapital. In German.
Nicole
My husband and I chose Harry’s monologue at the climax of When Harry Met Sally for the second reading at our wedding. Highly recommend.
Culture of Truth
For a wedding, you can’t top a reading from Game of Thrones.
Mnemosyne
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
That poem always reminds me of the movie version of Sense & Sensibility, and not in a good way (Marianne recites it in the rain and then nearly dies of pneumonia and grief).
I wish I could remember what our reading was, but damned if I know.
raven
We used this
When You Say Nothing At All”
It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don’t say a thing
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
All day long I can hear people talking out loud
But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd
Old Mr. Webster could never define
What’s being said between your heart and mine
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
Belafon
@Francisco The Man: they could go contemporary and read Wealth of Nations. If you didn’t say who it was by, most people would think it was a socialist manifesto.
otmar
We played http://lyrics.wikia.com/Oysterband:Blood_Wedding later in the evening at our wedding reception.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: S&S would be a great novel if all the characters died on the first page.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: That’s a great one! Did you also do This Be The Verse?
Mnemosyne
I think I read from the Song of Solomon at my friend’s wedding (Catholic Mass, very little choice in readings since it was Bible Only). On the video, you can see my eyes roll back in my head when I get to the part where I have to say “my love is like a gazelle.”
J.Ty
Perhaps a selection of Leonard Cohen. Dance Me to the End of Love? You can read his stuff out loud, doesn’t have to be in song form.
danimal
1 Corinthians 13 is a novel and untested reading in wedding ceremonies. You may want to give it a try, there’s a first time for everything.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
I like Jane Austen, and S&S is one of my all-time favorite movies, which is why it colors my view of that sonnet so much.
Amir Khalid
@Nicole:
Better, at any rate, than Harry’s speech at Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby’s wedding.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: I wanted to do “Neurotics,” but my bent penny of a wife would not let me.
Given the subject of “This be…” it would have been appropriate given the parenting we both got.
You can’t beat Larkin for brutal, brutal honesty.
J.Ty
Or maybe some Vonnegut. Timequake has some gorgeous passages.
Oops, my depression is showing.
flukebucket
So, we’ll go no more a-roving
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outweighs it sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving,
By the light of the moon
Percysowner
I’m showing my age and DFH sensibilities but I always liked this
On Marriage
Kahlil Gibran
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.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: Let’s agree to disagree then, without being disagreeable.
BGinCHI
@Amir Khalid: Great, now I want to go out and buy a wagon wheel coffee table.
some guy
“alone with everybody
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and them men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but they keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
David in NY
I’d think you’d want a reading the means something to YOU, not us. Given your choice of songs, I’m darned if I can glean what that might be.
Here, by the way, is the best poem I know on the subject of marriage — though from the perspective of someone who had been married about 60 years to his first love, and not from the perspective of a bride and groom.
It’s those last two stanzas that do it.
aimai
Here is what we read at our Wedding–it has been read at many weddings. It is a poem of my mother’s:
JOURNEY
Where are we going, love,
in a little yellow cart called marriage,
a dog, loyal, running after,
rings on our fingers?
Broad old road
taking us to market,
the fields on either side
flatten out to the sky.
Beyond the towns
is there an ocean
we might in the end
discover?
–Celia Gilbert from her book Bonfire
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI:
I don’t think I’ve ever read that one before. Brilliant!
SatanicPanic
Rimbaud. Definitely Rimbaud.
ETA- or if you want something more classical, Catullus
LanceThruster
I will now read these special vows which Homer has prepared for this occasion. “Do you, Marge, take Homer, in richness and in poorness” — poorness is underlined — “in impotence and in potence, in quiet solitude or blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey- navigated”… [consults the notecards] … and it goes on like this.
— Rev. Lovejoy officiates the Simpson’s wedding, “A Milhouse Divided”
cleek
@Jewish Steel:
i heard that one read at a wedding not too long ago. people lit right up when the speaker said she was going to read something from e.e.. a lot of people assumed it was going to be something wacky or too clever for the situation. but he’s an old softy, underneath the typography.
aimai
@Jewish Steel: I love that poem, I have used it in a book for my husband for one of our anniversaries.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
Come to think of it, Harry’s wagon-wheel coffee table rant would also make an interesting choice.
LanceThruster
@J.Ty:
“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
hrumpole
I personally love this:
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom.
(David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College). Anyone who’s been happily married knows the importance of that penultimate sentence.
Or just have your wife read ezekiel 25:17.
J.Ty
@LanceThruster: Sure but that’s not really a wedding reading, right?
My first thought was the conversation with his ex-wife when she had terminal cancer, ha.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: Those last two lines. Oh my. Oh.
Origuy
Well, you could go with Robert Burns’ English Song:
Husband, husband, cease your strife,
Nor longer idly rave, Sir:
Tho’ I am your wedded wife,
Yet I am not your slave, Sir.
‘One of two must still obey,
‘Nancy, Nancy;
‘Is it Man or Woman, say,
‘My Spouse Nancy.’
If ’tis still the lordly word,
Service and obedience;
I’ll desert my Sov’reign lord,
And so, good b’ye, Allegiance!
‘Sad will I be, so bereft,
‘Nancy, Nancy;
‘Yet I’ll try to make a shift,
‘My Spouse Nancy.’
My poor heart then break it must,
My last hour I am near it:
When you lay men in the dust,
Think how you will bear it.
‘I will hope and trust in Heaven,
‘Nancy, Nancy;
‘Strength to bear it will be given,
‘My Spouse Nancy.’
Well, Sir, from the silent dead,
Still I’ll try to daunt you;
Ever round your midnight bed
Horrid sprites shall haunt you.
‘I’ll wed another, like my Dear,
‘Nancy, Nancy;
‘Then all hell will fly for fear,
‘My Spouse, Nancy.’
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
You might not hate the movie version — Emma Thompson wrote it as well as starred in it and worked quite a bit of wry humor into it, especially with Elinor’s exasperation at having to deal with Marianne.
srv
I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with Scandinavian Troll religious rights. Here’s what google says
Here’s a book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/188127800X/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwgoodco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=188127800X&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
SatanicPanic
But enough jokes, you should read some Shel Silverstein
Suffern ACE
I gave my woman half my money at the general store,
I said, “Now buy a little groceries and don’t spend no more.”
But she paid ten dollars for a ten cent hat,
And bought some store-bought cat food for that mean-eyed cat.
JimBucksbury
“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 become 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. Your roots grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from your branches, you found that you were one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (not an exact quote)
GrayMatters
This is what we used when we got married.
A Map of the World, by Ted Kooser
One of the ancient maps of the world
is heart-shaped, carefully drawn
and once washed with bright colors,
though the colors have faded
as you might expect feelings to fade
from a fragile old heart, the brown map
of a life. But feeling is indelible,
and longing infinite, a starburst compass
pointing in all the directions
two lovers might go, a fresh breeze
swelling their sails, the future uncharted,
still far from the edge
where the sea pours into the stars
Scaffolding, by Seamus Heaney
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 sometimes 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.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: I’m not sure there is a humor wry enough to help my enjoyment. The Austen universe is not my kind of world. I’ll take Dickens any day.
J.Ty
I always thought “I’m Your Man” would be a great wedding dance song. But it should be evident by now that I don’t know what I’m talking about. It just distills the willingness–not the need, but the willingness–to put relationship over self when necessary. The examples he uses are a little extreme, but hey, it’s poetry.
I always thought Cohen would’ve won a Nobel by now if his stuff didn’t rhyme.
BGinCHI
@Suffern ACE: FTW.
I assume you meant to post this in the previous thread?
LanceThruster
@J.Ty:
I don’t know about that. It embodies the concept of “das Reich der Zwei.”
? Martin
scav
personally, if left uniqely to me (eg not a joint decision) I might grab a definition of marriage lifted from one of the recent same-sex marriage decisions. Bit off as I’ll never have kids, but this one got me: ‘It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”’ Seems as good a goal as any, to ground the relationship in our lives and the community, but there should be other grand pungent definitions in similar decision. That’s what judges do. But that’s entirely a personal choice, and if there’s a favorite breakfast cereal ad or paragraph of boilerplate that you somehow read and knew you both read the same way, seeing the same joke or meaning, I’d go with that whether it dealt with marriage or not.
The Ancient Randonneur
My suggestion would be to offer up a selection of your more memorable blog posts from here at BJ with a focus on your Bobo and Tiger Beat on the Potomac criticism. Some of those are real classics.
Chyron HR
“You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s only because I’m so in love.”
“Its because I’m so in love with you.”
“So love has blinded you?”
J.Ty
@LanceThruster: Sure, but it’s got some pretty screwed-up priorities on the narrator’s part. I prefer to think of it as a noble thought, rather than an instruction booklet. In other words, you’re right, but that song has different metadata in my meat-SQL.
uila
married me a wife
she’s been trouble all my life
run me out in the cold rain and snow
aimai
Here is a nice bit from the Movie version of Sense and Sensibility–in the Movie its read by one character to Marianne. I’ve always loved it but didn’t know until now that it was from the Faerie Queen:
“What though the sea with waves continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all ;
Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought :
For whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tyde unto another brought :
For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.”
Villago Delenda Est
“Rock the Boat” by the Hues Corporation.
Also, too, “Big Ten Inch Record” by Aerosmith.
“Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” by Meatloaf.
And of course the ultimate song for a wedding: “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. Sting is said to have remarked to a couple who made that “their song” “good luck with that!”
Quaker in a Basement
Cosmology Hymn from Rigveda:
In the beginning Love arose,
which was primal germ cell of mind.
The Seers, searching in their hearts with wisdom,
discovered the connection of Being in Nonbeing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chyron HR: ZOMG, George Lucas’ idea of “romantic dialog”
“Would you like to see my light saber?”
Ridnik Chrome
I was once asked to read something at a friend’s wedding, and read “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear. It is about a wedding, after all.
Trollhattan
Rilke?
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
I only recently realized that “This be the verse” is in turn a quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson. I had to watch They Were Expendable with my husband for the 1000th time, and John Wayne recites it, just to make everybody cry again.
Baron Elmo
One of the greatest ever lyrics about marriage was performed by the mighty Charlie Rich — and composed by his wife Margaret. It’s called “Life has its Little Ups and Downs,” and though a reading can’t convey the weight it has when sung in Charlie’s elegant voice (strong and smooth as Johnnie Walker Black), it’s still a hell of a lyric that conveys, better than anything I’ve ever seen, what they mean by “Till death do us part.”
I don’t know how to tell her
That I didn’t get that raise in pay today.
And I know how much she wanted the dress In Baker’s window,
and it breaks my heart to see her have to wait…
And cancel all her plans we made to celebrate.
But I can count on her to take it
With a smile and not a frown.
She knows that life has its little ups and downs,
Like ponies on a merry-go-round.
And no one grabs the brass ring every time,
But she don’t mind.
She wears a gold ring on her finger,
And it’s mine.
The new house plans we’ve had so long,
I guess will gather dust another year.
And the daffodils are blooming
that she planted way last fall
Upon the hill, and over by the gate.
And Lord knows I hate to say again we’ll have to wait.
But you can bet that she will take it
With a smile and not a frown.
She knows that life has its little ups and downs,
Like ponies on a merry-go-round.
And no one grabs the brass ring every time,
But she don’t mind.
She wears a gold ring on her finger,
And I’m so glad that it’s mine!
She wears a gold ring on her finger,
And I’m so glad that it’s mine!
Still gets me misty every time I listen.
gogol's wife
@David in NY:
That’s a great one.
scav
@BGinCHI: Dickens subsidiary characters yes, but there would be outright slaughter of nearly each and every hero and heroine if they let me in the canon. Esther Summerson would be eraserheaded back to the textual sea even before the dreaded Little Nell. If you catch me on a charitable day, give me your address and they can be refugees in your quarter. My side’s going to almost nothing but backstory and side incidents.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, that’s one case in which the movie of a Jane Austen novel is better than the novel.
Ridnik Chrome
Oops, looks like the title of Edward Lear’s famous poem about the bird and the feline is enough to send one’s comment to Moderation Land. I think that’s a first for me here at BJ…
aimai
@flukebucket: Seems kind of like a downer, to me. Its about giving up adventuring, not settling down in love.
E.
@BGinCHI:
You aren’t reading Austen carefully enough. Her humor is actually very similar to Dickens’s, although it takes a bit of practice sometimes to catch. I read somewhere once that Emma is a book that “should never be read for the first time.” And I thought, My God, how true. Give Austen another try.
BGinCHI
@gogol’s wife: Really? What does it take from RLS?
Iowa Old Lady
@Jewish Steel: That’s gorgeous. I vote for that.
BGinCHI
@scav: The Aged P!
Mnemosyne
Totally random trivia I just found out: the first movie that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” appeared in was … Neptune’s Daughter, and was sung by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.
Not what I expected.
BGinCHI
@E.: I’m not reading Austen at all. Emma twice and all the others at least once. I didn’t say she couldn’t write or did not have a sense of humor. Only that I don’t care for it.
The things that mostly trouble characters in her novels do not interest me much. That’s not a dismissal; it’s a matter of taste and preference.
If I want to read about a young woman in trouble I’ll read Charles Portis’s True Grit for the 20th time. That we can’t all agree on this is one of the things that makes literature great.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
See, and I find Dickens to be too sentimental and melodramatic. I prefer the stiff upper lip and dry humor of Austen.
aimai
To My Dear And Loving Husband (Ann Bradstreet)
To my Dear and Loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cAnneot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
David in NY
@gogol’s wife: Thanks. I’ve been thinking of it in relation to my elder son’s approaching wedding, but I don’t really think that, as a whole, it works for that. Anyway, it’s gonna be a Big Fat New Jersey Hindu wedding, so I don’t think there’s any readings that aren’t in Sanskrit.
Ed.: Also I like that poem because I can see myself in both the first and the last stanzas.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne: I have come to think that’s a weird song.
Even weirder contemplating Ricardo and Esther.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
How about William McGonagall?
scav
@BGinCHI: We can arrange trades and visas for everyone else. I’ve a weird fondness for Reginald Wilfer for reasons I’m unable to explain.
eemom
@gogol’s wife:
Also too, Colin Firth as Darcy in the BBC P&P was hotter than Darcy in the novel. OMG he was hot.
Trollhattan
@David in NY:
Wow, do you have to cut any Bollywood moves during the ceremony?
Omnes Omnibus
Lovers Infiniteness by John Donne
IF yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all ;
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can intreat one other tear to fall ;
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent ;
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant.
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.
Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then ;
But if in thy heart since there be or shall
New love created be by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For this love was not vow’d by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general ;
The ground, thy heart, is mine ; what ever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.
Yet I would not have all yet.
He that hath all can have no more ;
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store ;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it ;
Love’s riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it ;
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them ; so we shall
Be one, and one another’s all.
Stephanie
My boyfriend will be reading Billy Collin’s “Litany” at his friend’s wedding this weekend:
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Donne has lots of these. Great choice.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: I agree with this. Austen is so, so, dry. No one can get through the part of Sense and Sensibility where the brother and his wife decide they don’t need to give any money to the sisters without cracking up. Its brutal.
Lolis
Pablo Neruda love poems are the best
aimai
@Stephanie: Fantastic! Just fantastic!
David in NY
@Trollhattan: Not that I’ve been informed. It’s actually not such a “Big Fat” wedding as a “Medium-sized, a Little Chubby” one. Groom is refusing to come in on horse, much less elephant. But we’re not involved in the planning (much) so who knows.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I’ve always liked Donne.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: I went to a wedding where they played that. My cousin, whose sense of humor was utterly reprehensible and could find something to say just about anything muttered “so do we start the pool on which one ends up with the boiled cat and the knife in the back?” I think I busted a rib trying to keep from howling like a lunatic!
David in NY
@Omnes Omnibus: @BGinCHI:
Me too, though I didn’t remember that one. Very nice.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
The movie version of Persuasion is also very good — it came out the same year as S&S.
ranchandsyrup
Whew. Made it home–had to use some back roads. Police says we are unlikely to be evacuated so I feel fortunate. Saw a few houses on fire. Sad. Police said that probably 30 or so houses have caught fire. Dogs are alright and glad our neighbor took them in his home.
Gonna go and help some other neighbors pack up their stuff. Don’t blame them for taking off.
Julie
@Percysowner: I was just about to suggest this. We read a portion of it at our wedding, during a wine ceremony (an updated take on the old unity candle), and it was lovely.
lethargytartare
Plato’s Symposium is a nice resource – my brother use the “zeus cracked us in half” passage as a reading at his wedding, and in a moment of collusion-free serendipity, I’d selected a different passage for the toast.
booferama
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Gotta disagree. Not only is it kind of a marital cliche, the poem’s message is much more complex than it appears at first; it’s not really a pro-marriage poem so much as a subtle dig at the faithfulness of the couple.
David in NY
@lethargytartare: I’ve seen that one done at a wedding. It was great — marriage of a couple of mathematicians, seemed appropriate somehow.
kbuttle
I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.
Amazing.
elmo
@ranchandsyrup: Be careful! Very glad your home appears to be safe, but remember that winds can turn at any time.
Fire in May!! What is October going to be like, for God’s sake?
Stay safe!
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Also works well as a dead giveaway for which of my students actually read Sense & Sensibility, in which Shakespeare’s sonnets never appear.
FlipYrWhig
I read this one at my brother’s wedding:
Happy they! the happiest of their Kind!
Whom gentler Stars unite, and in one Fate
Their Hearts, their Fortunes, and their Beings blend.
‘Tis not the coarser Tie of human Laws,
Unnatural oft, and foreign to the Mind,
That binds their Peace, but Harmony itself,
Attuning all their Passions into Love;
Where Friendship full-exerts her softest Power,
Perfect Esteem enliven’d by Desire
Ineffable, and Sympathy of Soul;
Thought meeting Thought, and Will preventing Will,
With boundless Confidence: for nought but Love
Can answer Love, and render Bliss secure.
James Thomson, _Spring_, 1729.
Rex Everything
Dr James Dobson on marriage:
– Guard your family relationships against erosion as though you were defending your very lives. –Love for a Lifetime, p. 111
– Don’t permit the possibility of divorce to enter your thinking. Even in moments of great conflict and discouragement, divorce is no easy solution. –Love for a Lifetime, p. 103
– A husband and wife should have a date every week or two, leaving the children at home and forgetting their problems for an evening. –The New Dare to Discipline, p. 245
– Both good marriages and bad marriages have moments of conflict, but in healthy relationships, the husband and wife search for answers and areas of agreement because they love each other. –Preparing for Adolescence, p. 100
– If a husband and wife are deeply committed to Jesus Christ, they enjoy enormous advantages over the family with no spiritual commitment. –Love for a Lifetime, p. 49
– Marital problems are almost inevitable when couples overcommit themselves during the early years. The bonding that should occur in the first decade requires time together–time that cannot be given if it is absorbed elsewhere. Success will wait, but a happy family will not. –Parenting Isn’t for Cowards, p. 189
– Married life is a marathon. It is not enough to make a great start toward long-term marriage. You will need the determination to keep plugging. Only then will you make it to the end. –Love for a Lifetime, p. 120
– A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of marriage, giving meaning and purpose to every dimension of living. –Love for a Lifetime, p. 52
– Committed love is expensive, but it yields the highest returns on the investment at maturity. –What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women, p. 176
– Men typically derive self-esteem by being respected; women feel worthy when they are loved. –What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women, p. 64
– Every husband should seek to keep the romantic fires aglow in the relationship, by the use of love notes and surprises and candlelight dinners and unexpected weekend trips. –Straight Talk to Men, p. 125
– Love is not defined by the emotional highs and lows, but is dependent upon a steady and unchanging commitment of the will. –What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women, p. 91
Roger Moore
@elmo:
There won’t be much left to burn.
NotMax
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
– Pablo Neruda
Omnes Omnibus
@lethargytartare:Plus it segues neatly into The Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: Darcy is a dick. Edward Ferrars in S&S is a total zero. Captain Wentworth is probably the best of the Austen men.
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
Requiem
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
David in NY
@Rex Everything: You really know how to spoil a good time, doncha?
Rex Everything
@David in NY: I try.
Mnemosyne
@Rex Everything:
“Mary and I have been married for 50 years and we have never once said the word ‘divorce.’ Murder, yes, but divorce, never!”
– Jack Benny
gogol's wife
@eemom:
There is nothing hotter than Colin in P&P. But I think the novel Darcy is pretty hot too.
Amir Khalid
@Rex Everything:
I doubt that this happy couple would be receptive to the words of him who founded Focus on The Family, especially at their wedding.
chopper
please say it’s the version by schlong.
p.a.
Without you, Heaven would be too dull to bear
And Hell would not be Hell if you are there.
John Sparrow
(1906 – 1992) English academic, barrister & book-collector
“Drive My Car”
Asked a girl what she wanted to be
She said baby, “Can’t you see
I wanna be famous, a star on the screen
But you can do something in between”
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I love you
I told a girl that my prospects were good
And she said baby, “It’s understood
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But I can show you a better time”
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I love you
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I love you
I told that girl I can start right away
And she said, “Listen baby I got something to say
I got no car and it’s breaking my heart
But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start”
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I love you
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
But not better than the novel! I do love Ciaran Hinds though.
BGinCHI
@ranchandsyrup: Dude, I had no idea your place was getting threatened! Hope everything is ok.
Southern Beale
I think we did something Biblical at our wedding to appease the Baptist contigent.
How about Oscar Wilde, “We Are Made One with What We Touch and See”:
Excerpt, read the whole thing here.
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!
MochaDem
What Was Told, That
Jalal al-Din Rumi, 1207 – 1273
What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that’s happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs!
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: Oh, come on. He’s aloof and condescending and she only starts to like him when she sees his giant house, at which point his aggravating and snippy attitude promptly becomes sensitive and mysterious. Ugh.
qwerty42
Well, some old time religion might be just the thing:
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!”
— or not.
gogol's wife
@FlipYrWhig:
I think you need to read it again.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig:
Story of my life.
Kathleen
I have no suggestions for a reading. I just wanted to give you props for your choice of music. Higher and Higher is one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time. The Jackie Wilson version. Not the Rita Coolidge soft rock favorite version. She committed a sacrilege by uttering one syllable.
Rich (In Name Only) in Reno
An Interlude
By Julius Marx
Did you ever sit and ponder, as you walk along the strand,
that life’s a bitter battle at the best.
And if you only knew it you would lend a helping hand,
then every man could meet the final test.
The world is but a stage, my friend, and life’s but a game,
and how you play is all that matters in the end.
But whether a man is right or wrong, a woman gets the blame,
and your mother is your dog’s best friend.
Then up came mighty Casey, and strode up to the bat,
and Sheridan was fifty miles away.
For it takes a heap of loving to make a home like that,
on the road to where the flying fishes play.
So be a real life Pagliac’
and laugh, Clown, laugh.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Are you talking about the movie or the book? Because you will never manage to convince any heterosexual woman that Colin Firth is not teh hawt no matter what his character does.
Hungry Joe
Nowhere near us, but holy shit — this is my brother’s street RIGHT NOW: http://www.cbs8.com/story/25504932/all-evacuations-lifted-in-bernardo-fire-800-acres-burned
Lyrebird
My friends read this from the Velveteen Rabbit:
‘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.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
and e.e. cummings’ small hands like the rain (?) is amazing and makes me cry.
paulgottlieb
“These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding. Loving, soulful, passionate
aimai
Ah, Rumi!
Some Kiss We Want
There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At
night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language- door and
open the love window. The moon
won’t use the door, only the window.
From Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I don’t like Book Darcy at all. But I’m not much for brooding heroes in general, especially when they’re not brooding outcasts but brooding, um, in-casts.
BGinCHI
@Hungry Joe: Been joking all winter with my SoCal friends that they were going to burn up starting in May, but I was really hoping to be wrong. Gonna be a loooong summer.
Betty Cracker
I don’t have any reading suggestions that haven’t already been covered, but I did want to say congratulations!
Kay
@Rex Everything:
That’s great.
The end of what? One of you has to die. That’s what he means.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I didn’t read Wuthering Heights until I was an adult and discovered that Heathcliff is actually the villain of the book who tries to ruin the lives of everyone around him and is terrified that Cathy’s ghost is going to kill him. Damn you, Hollywood!
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: Meh. IMHO the hot Austen bad-boy is definitely Mr. Willoughby.
Southern Beale
@Mnemosyne:
Funny, I read that book a million times, and I never saw Heathcliff as the villain. Just tortured and misunderstood and very heartsick.
Those Brontes. Their expression of “true love” was always a bit warped.
SatanicPanic
@Hungry Joe: woah that is scary. That Carlsbad fire has apparently burned some homes already
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale: To wit: Kate Beaton, Dude-Watchin’ with the Brontes
Rex Everything
@Kay: I like this one:
This is from something called Straight Talk to Men, but it seems Dr. Dobson draws “inspiration” from the pocket-sized hardcovers available in the B&N checkout area.
gogol's wife
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s funny! I love The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Darcy turns out to be a deeply moral person — isn’t that what constitutes “hot” for Jane Austen?
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: @BGinCHI:
It’s the Poinsettia Fire. Fortunately their house isn’t on the canyon side of the street. Lotta firefighters there, constant drops from helicopters. I’d say the chances are pretty good the neighborhood will survive, but it ain’t a sure thing.
Hey, S.P. — should I start a band: “Poinsetttia Fire”?
Randy Khan
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, number 14:
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say,
‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.
Although the Neruda @108 is pretty good, too.
Bubblegum Tate
O/T but utterly fucking amazing: The NRA has a hip new Web show for hip people about being hip with guns. I am not making that up. See how far you can get into it without cracking the hell up.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: maybe, but not to me!
scav
Darcy’s pretty much a walking cliché although at least a near progenitor of the breed. Thing is, there’s still that brass tacks monetary spine behind the other stuff. Cash and Class and think things through, hold fast, don’t go overboard in any direction.
Kay
@Rex Everything:
I like the grimmer selections:
How about that for a wedding! You have to close with “commitment of the will” in the sternest tone possible :)
PST
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Or Sonnet 115:
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose million’d accidents
Creep in ‘twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas, why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say ‘Now I love you best,’
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?
Hungry Joe
@Bubblegum Tate: Less than 90 seconds into the conversation. Not a snicker, either, but a for-real laugh. It was a good break from the fire coverage.
shelley
Always wondered about ‘and the voice of the turtle is heard throughout the land.’
SatanicPanic
@Hungry Joe: Definitely! If we get someone else to form Witch Creek Fire we could have a nice little theme night
aimai
@Southern Beale: The system ate this comment once. I agree with you, SB. The villain of the book is the world that drove Heathcliffe and Cathy apart. Their love was natural, almost animalistic, and that which was civilized and comprehensible destroyed it. It also contains my favorite bronte scene–when the unreliable narrator, the sentimental and treacherous character who arrives from the big city and who views the scene, goes to Heathcliffe’s house and mistakes a bunch of dead rabbits for a lady’s pet.
Cara
@JimBucksbury: -this one was read at a wedding I attended last weekend. It was wonderful!!!
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: Great! I’ll start learning how to play an instrument.
Trollhattan
@Stephanie:
Hilarious. But I wanted to be the bread and knife!
PsiFighter37
I have to figure out a wedding song too. Thinking “To Make You Feel My Love” as covered by Adele, since my fiancee absolutely loves her singing (and loves the song).
JPL
@Bubblegum Tate: My head bands don’t come in fancy boxes and I don’t want my guns to. It’s a joke, right?
Tommy
I wish I had a song for you. I don’t. But I have a story. My brother and his wife got married in Florida. We have no connection to the state, other then they wanted to get married on a beach. It seems it is easier to do then you might think. We rented a few condos and just spent the week there. I am a hiker/camper. Not a huge fan of beaches. I literally never thought I’d leave the place. I was in heaven. It was amazing. I could be on that beach for the rest of my life.
shelley
Really. Hollywood left out all those scenes like Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s corpse.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Maybe it’s because I read it as an adult and not a teenager, but I was rooting for Cathy’s ghost to kill Heathcliff off. It probably didn’t help that it had always been held up as this Big Romance and I was like, WTH? Cathy runs away from him and marries someone else because she realizes he’s too unstable.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chyron HR:
That reminded me of an anecdote from the time of Grace Kelly’s engagement to Prince Rainier. As the future princess of Monaco, Grace had to learn some basic French, and learn it quickly (among other things, her wedding services were in French). The francophone priest who was coaching her was pretty appalled at her accent, and at one point supposedly burst out, “I’ve always heard that love was blind, but I never knew it was deaf!”
Rex Everything
@Kay: It should be read by Christopher Lee over Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ridnik Chrome:
What are caterers charging for mince and slices of quince these days?
WereBear
@Trollhattan: Love that.
Of course, if you can squeeze in another song, Ry Cooder’s Version of “Girls from Texas” fits right in.
Tommy
@PsiFighter37: I am not married myself, but I come back to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
A few marriages I’ve been to something like this might have happened. Maybe Chris Brown isn’t the best :). But in our 30s we had a little fun with getting married. Made fun of ourselves. I recall the last wedding, we all went from DC to NC. It was a Wicca wedding. Maybe one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
shelley
No love for Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You.’
dnfree
@Percysowner: We had that at our wedding in 1967. Some people choose “On Love” from Khalil Gibran, but “On Marriage” is more realistic.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I saw that at the Lake Theatre when it first came out! I think I was about 6 or 7 years old, and I loved Esther Williams (odd, as I have never learned to swim). I’m not sure I’ve seen it since then — certainly not in many decades.
Omnes Omnibus
@PsiFighter37: My ex and I had Leonard Cohen’s 1000 Kisses Deep as our song. Perhaps it wasn’t the greatest choice. Still, it is a cool song.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve always been a fan of Rabindranath Tagore:
Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
OMG, another McGonagall fan! He gives me such joy!!
Kerry Reid
I’ve used this Rilke poem a few times. But then, I have had a weird relationship (no pun intended) with commitment:
How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in the hand?
O sweetest of songs.
Rainer Maria Rilke – “Love Song”
Kerry Reid
@Trollhattan: I should’ve read the whole thread before I commented. Great minds and all that, though!
SiubhanDuinne
@ranchandsyrup:
Thank you for the update, and very glad you and your home (and dogs!) are safe. What great neighbours you have, and it sounds as though you are an equally good neighbour to those who need some help from you.
Dammit, this is what “community” is all about! What in the world do Republicans find so threatening about the concept?
Anne Laurie
Twenty years ago, after fifteen years together, the about-to-become Spousal Unit went with a much more poetic version of what’s now called the ‘Eskimo Vows’:
I went with a chunk of Rilke’s Letter to A Young Poet #7 — again, a version I can’t find online, but here’s a scholarly translation:
Our guests liked his reading better, but they agreed the Rilke was appropriate for me!
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne:
It tends to work and it puts the lie to their myth of successful individuals bootstrapping themselves to success.
PhoenixRising
So you’ve got Rumi. Velveteen Rabbit. That leaves Adrienne Rich. What we used, 18 years ago:
In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready
and each of us knows it I have never loved
like this I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love
In the diary as the wind began to tear
all the tents over us I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together but till now
we had not touched our strength
In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean “to survive”
A cable blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow We will not live
to settle for less We have dreamed of this
all of our lives
Nice review of her work, obit, here.
MazeDancer
You do not need a reading.
Though Raven’s suggestion of reading lyrics is a good one. Pick that song you really wanted to use and read the lyrics. People always smile when they hear lyrics read.
The reason you do not need a reading is that exactly zero people are there for any other reason than they love you. They want to hear you. They want to celebrate and support you.
They will love, love, love hearing what you two have to say about the topic at hand – Love & Marriage. Consider the reading to be things you believe. What you believe about Love. What you believe about Marriage. Why, in this day and age, you’re actually getting Married. It will help the audience celebrate your unique union.
Write a couple statements of your own. 90 seconds worth. It doesn’t have to be gorgeous, perfect, or fancy. It just has to be real.
And big props for Jackie Wilson!
Tommy
My parents are coming up on 50 years of marriage. They are rock stars. I joked the other day here after my grandfather passed away, and they got more money then they could spend, the first thing my father did was track down the first car he went on a date with my mom (I got the pics BTW). A 55 Ford Thunderbird. Bought the car and gave it to her saying I love you. My mom tools around town in a 55 Thunderbird. I mean how cool is that …..
? Martin
I kind of picks up there at the end. But the guests will all remember it.
Anne Laurie
@PsiFighter37: We used The Battle Hymn of Love (it wasn’t a cliche 20 years ago! and besides, I wanted one of my oldest friends to sing & it was perfect for her voice & range). But our first dance song, accidentally, fortuitously, turned out to be In Your Eyes… although we’d never (still haven’t AFAIK) seen Say Anything…
Kerry Reid
I have always thought the Talking Heads’ “This Must be the Place” is the perfect wedding song.
Bubblegum Tate
@JPL:
I’d love to say it’s a joke, but I don’t think it is. Which is pretty amazing in its own right.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rex Everything:
Heh.
(Yes, I am a 12-year-old boy.)
Anne Laurie
@shelley:
Turtle dove. Cooing softly.
Joel
William Carlos Williams is my bag. We used an excerpt from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
For our wedding, too,
the light was wakened
and shone. The light!
the light stood before us
waiting!
I thought the world
stood still.
At the altar
so intent was I
before my vows,
so moved by your presence
a girl so pale
and ready to faint
that I pitied
and wanted to protect you.
As I think of it now,
after a lifetime,
it is as if
a sweet-scented flower
were poised
and for me did open.
Asphodel
has no odor
save to the imagination
but it too
celebrates the light.
It is late
but an odor
as from our wedding
has revived for me
and begun again to penetrate
into all crevices
of my world.
Alce_y_Ardilla
@FlipYrWhig: I second the sentiment of Mark Twain on Jane Austen
Omnes Omnibus
@MazeDancer: Why write your own when Elvis Costello has already said everything that needs to be said?
I’ll Wear It Proudly
PsiFighter37
@Tommy: We’ve contemplated doing a choreographed first dance to R&B / rap song, just because it’d be hilarious and quite a bit out of character, but it does take time to prep (you don’t want to mess up something like that), and we don’t want to make fools of ourselves.
Also, Chris Brown is on my fiancee’s shit list for how he treated Rihanna, so can’t play his tunes.
Roger Moore
I don’t know about poetry or songs, but you definitely need to use the Dr. Seuss wedding vows.
Tommy
@Alce_y_Ardilla: I’ve been thinking of doing this (you all should think about doing this):
http://littlefreelibrary.org/ourhistory/
Twain and Jane Austen would be two books that would start. Oh and a ton of sci-fy. But I have so many ideas I don’t ever implement. 20+ kids walk by my house every day going to school. A “little library” well, seems like something I should do! Maybe just one kid will pick up a book.
LT
I’ve got a song called “You Two Don’t Make a Nice Couple” that I’d be willing to play for you.
Apart from that, this is awful nice:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3t9gg_traces-neil-young-csn-y_music
And hey, never thought of it, but “Harvest Moon” would be a really wonderful wedding song.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/harvestmoon.html
RSA
Shelley, maybe?
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle –
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea –
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
I like the grandness of the imagery tied to the narrator’s focus on the moment. It may be too tentative, though.
(For years I haven’t read much poetry, but someone recently pointed me to Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art–totally inappropriate for a wedding–and I’ve started in again.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy:
Doesn’t really work if you live a multi-unit building.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
You could put one in the lobby.
Mary in Ohio
This is the reading my husband and I used. We found it on the offbeat bride website. They have quite a few suggestions for non-traditional (non-religious) readings. And our first dance was to Ingrid Michaelson “The way I am” which also came from suggestions on the offbeat bride site.
How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
by Taylor Mali
First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy
Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.
Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!
Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block
and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions
at once, or wind itself around and around you
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.
But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.
LT
Regarding my previosu comment – yeah, um, you were loking for a poem. So never mind…
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Stephanie: Oh, I love Billy Collins! I had never read that one – it gave me goosebumps. (And I laughed, too!)
Bonnie
@Nicole: I saw that just last night; and, it is a wonderful statement. I never would have responded to Harry the way Sally did. I would have just melted and said yes.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@booferama: I don’t know that it’s a ‘subtle dig’ … I always understood it to be WS playing with the whole legal aspect of marriage – which, I suppose, could be that subtle dig. Anyway, I’m always moved by these lines –
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
Enough so that I read it at my father’s funeral, as a reminder of the great love he had for my mother.
rea
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116
They won’t allow my guy and me to get married yet here in Michigan, but we’ve read that one to each other.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
The Fat Kate Middleton
@NotMax: So very beautiful.
Bobby Thomson
All reet, all reet, cool and discreet.
hitchhiker
Oy, I’m way late to this thread.
But just in case 200 suggestions haven’t done it for you, I suggest a reading from the Velveteen Rabbit (does it hurt to be real?) and maybe some parts of this bit from Po Bronson:
Saxifrage
from Wendell Berry:
“The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join one another only by joining the unknown. We must not be misled by the procedures of experimental thought: in life, in the world, we are never given two known results to choose between, but only one result that we choose without knowing what it is.
Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words, bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed; some victories cannot be won; some loneliness is incorrigible. But there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real; these givens come to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different place, or to make it perfect, but to make it inhabitable and to make it better. To flee from its realities is only to arrive at them unprepared.
Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you – and marriage, time, life, history, and the world – will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@rea: Oh, just come on over here to Iowa. I’d love to read it for you at your wedding.
Bonnie
This is from a movie with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum called, “The Vow.” I found it meaningful.
Paige: I vow to help you love life, to always hold you with tenderness and to have the patience that love demands, to speak when words are needed and to share the silence when they are not, to agree to disagree on red velvet cake, and to live within the warmth of your heart and always call it home.
Leo: I vow to fiercely love you in all your forms, now and forever. I promise to never forget that this is a once in a lifetime love. And to always know in the deepest part of my soul that no matter what challenges might carry us apart, we will always find our way back to each other.
I saw a mention of Elvis. His best for weddings IMHO is “The Wonder of You” or “And, I Lover Her So.” The second song is also done well by its author Don McClean. I am also a great fan of the e.e. cummings poem mentioned above a few times, i carry your heart.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well hello there Omnes.
(couldn’t resist)
Howard Beale IV
Tom Leher:
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I am that one hetero woman. I don’t know why but just never worked for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Happens all the time.
Hawes
You’re a leftist. Pable Neruda had a poem with the line:
So intimate, your hand on my chest is my hand
So intimate, when you fall asleep, it is my eyes that close
Howard Beale IV
Well, there’s the final track from Red Octopus from Jefferson Starship:
Howard Beale IV
Now, if you want something to play at the ‘you may kiss the bride’ part, try the last few minutes of the final movement of Mahler’s 3rd. (at 16:37)
taylormattd
I’m too stupid to contribute to this conversation, but congratulations Doug. Didn’t realize wedding plans were on the horizon.
Morzer
How about Schopenhauer’s “Marriage as Prelude to Death”?
Ken Pidcock
Alice Friman’s The Wedding Poem
This day
Let no one claim
That love is false. Let no one
Tell a tale of love’s dilution,
Cross his lips with doubt,
Or discuss the up and down and up
Of love chained to a balance beam –
Laundry and who takes out the trash.
Instead, let us make a pact:
To stop for this short time
The radio in our heads, the voices
Of discontent that drive us mad –
The committee of shoulds and oughts
And might have beens. The old harangue
Of never never never.
To forsake, for these next minutes
(Not for this couple but for ourselves),
All the symptoms of our days.
Then, together, let us swear,
That this sun, this sky, these vows,
This bubble balanced on the point
of a knife is all there is –
For we have pushed aside the walls
That close us in
To come to this shared space. And see –
We have filled the space with flowers,
Where love, like some bright bird
Too swift to hold,
May light for us a while and sing.
Howard Beale IV
@Morzer: No find. Linky?
MomSense
@Tommy:
We just started one in our neighborhood a few months ago. It’s really fun.
ETA The seniors in the neighborhood are enjoying the YA and kids books that I have dropped off. There is a group of women passing around the Hunger Games and Uglies series I dropped off.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: There are a metric shit ton of them in Madison. I actually just like looking in them and seeing what combinations of books people chose to place in them. Is there a theme? Can one see political leanings or signs of travel to specific places? Academic interests? And so on. I am weird.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I do the same thing. Even at parties, I am likely to be standing next to the bookshelves trying to get a sense of who the people are by what they read. It’s not fair to do this since some of my favorite books are not on my shelves but borrowed from the library or a friend.
When our neighborhood free library started, it seemed that people were trying to get rid of books but now it is starting to take hold and I think people are wanting to share good reads.
It has surprised me that people are snatching up the YA books I’ve dropped off, though.
daize
A favorite. Used the first two and a half lines on my wedding invitation.
“Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another’s thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
as Venus’ chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as the other where;
And as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star.”
― Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense:
Conversation starters with the grandkids.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are probably right.
I should probably add a quote to the thread. Another Rilke.
mclaren
If you’re about to embark upon marriage, several texts would work well:
Dante’s Inferno.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
And of course Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground (better translated as “Letters from the Underworld” or “Bulletins from Hell”)
The paragraph on page 3 proves especially apt:
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Thank you so much for entering into the spirit of the thread and not being a douchecanoe.
Morzer
@Howard Beale IV:
I must confess, I invented it for the occasion.
dave
I like “I do, I will, I have” by Ogden Nash:
How wise I am to have instructed the butler to instruct the first footman
to instruct the second footman to instruct the doorman to order my
carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered into by a
man who can’t sleep with the window shut and a woman who can’t
sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between flora and fauna
and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people one of whom
never remembers birthdays and the other never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or the gas pipe
and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the windowsill,
it’s raining in, and he replies Oh they’re all right, it’s only raining
straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it’s the only known example of the happy meeting of the
immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat over
everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particulary if
he has income and she is pattable.
Athenae
More Rilke:
The Lovers
Look how each becomes gift and giver:
their veins with nothing but spirit flow.
Look how their forms like axles quiver,
round which revolving raptures glow.
Thirsters, and straight there are draughts for their drinking;
wakers, and look, they are sated with sight.
Let them, into each other sinking,
rise, surviving each other’s might.
Ranier Maria Rilke
A.
kathleen
A Biblical choice is Paul’s Epistle to the romans: “Love is patient, love is kind, etc, etc.” You’ve probably heard it. Always makes me tear up.
Jado
http://weddings.weddingchannel.com/wedding-planning-ideas/wedding-ceremony-ideas/articles/wedding-vows-native-american-apache.aspx
Native American wedding blessings. They are good