I enjoy creating ceremony readings and brainstorming fresh ideas!
Here are some of the wedding ceremony readings that my couples have chosen this year. I’d love to hear which one you love the most!
Everything I know about love from Dolly Alderton
I know that love can be loud and jubilant…It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them.
It’s laughing until you wheeze.
It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.
It’s skinny-dipping at dawn. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.
It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.
I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.
It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.
It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine.
It’s saying ‘You’re safer here than in a car’ as they hyperventilate on an EasyJet flight to Dublin.
It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’.
I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.
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 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.
Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground,
And when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches,
They find that they are one tree and not two.
Whitney Hanson Poetry
They say sometimes love starts with a spark
And that might be true
But if I were to wish you a love
I wouldn’t wish fire for you
You see fire is powerful it burns bright then it’s gone
It’s beautiful and warm
but it doesn’t last long
So instead of wishing you
A love that burns
I wish you love like a river
That twists and turns
It changes and it flows
It is powerful and free
But it consistently finds its way
Back to the sea
And so like the water
I hope your love is ever-growing ever-changing
I hope your love it powerful and free
And may you always find each other
Like the river finds the sea
Song lyrics
And I'll be the one
Who's by your side
I'll be the one
Still taking pride
When we're old if they ask me,
"How do you define success?"
I'll say, "You meet a woman
You fall in love
You ask her and
She says, 'Yes.'"
Let's get married
I love and I want to stay with you
Let's get married
Have kids and grow old and grey with you
Let's get married
Hold hands when we walk in the park
All right, you can get a cat, just as long as it barks
For the good times
For the days when we can do no wrong
For the bad times
For the moments when we think we can't go on
For the family
For the lives of the children that we've planned
Let's get married
C'mon darlin', please take my hand
I Saw Two Clouds at Morning – J.C. Brainard
I saw two clouds at morning,
Tinged by the rising sun,
And in the dawn they floated on,
And mingled into one;
I thought that morning cloud was blest,
It moved so sweetly to the west.
I saw two summer currents
Flow smoothly to their meeting,
And join their course,
with silent force,
In peace each other greeting;
Calm was their course through banks of green,
While dimpling eddies played between.
Such be your gentle motion,
Till life’s last pulse shall beat;
Like summer’s beam,
and summer’s stream,
Float on, in joy, to meet
A calmer sea,
where storms shall cease,
A purer sky, where all is peace.
Wild Awake by Hilary T Smith
"People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves."
Union – Robert Fulghum
You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making promises and agreements in an informal way.
All those conversations that were held riding in a car or over a meal or during long walks — all those sentences that began with “When we’re married” and continued with “I will and you will and we will”- those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe”- and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.
The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things we’ve promised and hoped and dreamed- well, I meant it all, every word.”
Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another- acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, and even teacher, for you have learned much from one another in these last few years. Now you shall say a few words that take you across a threshold of life, and things will never quite be the same between you.
For after these vows, you shall say to the world, this- is my husband, this- is my wife.
Your love story as a bespoke poem, this is becoming very popular! This year I’ve written many poems for weddings, vow renewals & birthdays!
Looking for original readings you’ve never heard before? Check out my Meg Stanier Celebrant poems! Including: Our Matchmaking App, No Longer a Solo Traveller & Our Dream Home.
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