What are your options if you want to include a reading in your wedding ceremony, but aren't a fan of Shakespeare and don't want to have 1 Corinthians 13?
The great thing about civil ceremonies in Australia is, apart from 3 sentences that I have to say from The Marriage Act 1961 and 1 legal sentence you have to say in your vows, the rest is completely up to you!
The sky's the limit.
And you can make your ceremony even more meaningful by finding a reading (or two) that you LOVE - rather than something you think is 'just okay'. Readings can come from anywhere; lyrics from songs, quotes from movies or the words from your team's victory song (God help us all..)
Here are five of my favourites..
He’s not perfect – a quote by Bob Marley
He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect.
But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice,
and if he admits to being human and making mistakes,
hold onto him and give him the most you can.
He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment,
but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break.
Don’t hurt him, don’t change him,
and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze.
Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad,
and miss him when he’s not there.
Love hard when there is love to be had.
Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.
How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog - 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.
A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal.
We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone.
Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others.
We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.
The Blue Eyed Devil - Lisa Kleypas
I no longer believed in the idea of soulmates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you.
Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
(an excerpt from)
Les Miserablés - Victor Hugo
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.
