Finding Wedding Readings That Work For You

Having trouble deciding what kind of readings you might use during your wedding ceremony? Can’t find just the right text that expresses how you and your partner feel about each other? Many people will go with religious readings, which are always fine, and others will go with the straight legal text of a civil ceremony. But more and more people are trying to find ways to personalize what is read at their wedding. How can you go about doing that?

For wedding reading suggestions, you can ask your chaplain, priest or justice of the peace. You can ask family and friends. You can go to the library or spend some time in one of those giant books stores where nobody ever bothers you. You can search the web for “wedding poetry” and be offered numerous ideas (sometimes the same ones over and over). These are all great places to look. But wouldn’t it be nice to have something read at your wedding ceremony or your reception that is specifically meaningful to you as a couple. I don’t know about you, but I find that lovely reading from Corinthians a little over done at weddings. Other than writing it yourself, such a poem can be tricky to find.

Now, having spoken of how lovely it is to have to have something personal read at your wedding, I am about to admit to something rather contradictory. We ‘personalized’ one of the readings at our wedding by stealing a poem we heard read at the wedding of some dear friends of ours. The poem was The Truelove, by David Whyte from the House of Belonging (you can find a copy of it at http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Truelove.html). We asked our friends first if they would mind, and not only did they look forward to hearing it again, Doug agreed to be the one to read it.

The interesting story here is how our friends, Doug and Ruth, found this poem that suited them, and us, so well. They didn’t want to have “the usual” wedding readings and really made every effort to search for something that was meaningful to them and spoke of them as a couple. In a moment of inspiration, they went online to the Lonely Planet website as together and individually they are a very well traveled couple, and they posted a message asking the worldly, interesting readers there if they had any suggestions for wedding readings. They had several responses from people around the world and chose The Truelove, suggested by someone from Seattle, I believe.

The message here is not to settle for “the usual” if you are looking for something more. Use ways unconventional to find readings, short stories or poems that are meaningful to you and your partner and that will speak of the life you hope to share together. Maybe you remember a beautiful story you read as a child (incidentally, our second reading was from The House at Pooh Corner), or maybe you have some favorite song lyrics that could be read. If you are into fly fishing, or gardening, or hockey, or cooking, or whatever, post a message on a message board and see if anyone has any suggestions for you. It is an incredibly wide world out there, but it will feel smaller when you get a suggestion for a wedding poem or reading sent to you from Warsaw or Wollongong. After all…

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

posted by Heather and Dan @ 3:02 PM