Wedding Readings?

Hi everyone!

C and I are in the middle of planning our wedding ceremony. (WEEEE!) We're having a strictly non-religious ceremony, but when you take out the religious stuff, the ceremony is awfully short.

Anyway, we're looking for some passages to read at the wedding. We need to pad it out a bit for all those people flying over the Atlantic. Did anyone here have secular readings? What did you have and, more importantly, how did you choose them? (I promise I won't steal  )

The classic one is Shakespeare's Sonnett 116.  That's been read at a few weddings I've been to.

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.

I used a website, I think this is the one (it's the one bookmarked anyway) to find a reading.  I like shakespeare, but I can't for the life of me remember if it was the one Britwife quoted. 

http://www.weddingguide.co.uk/articles/wordsmusic/poems/lovepoems.asp

By the way, at one civil (as opposed to religious) wedding I went to, as well as a reading, they had one of their friends sing a song. If you have any musically inclined friends or relatives, maybe you could ask them to be a part of the ceremony?

We asked DH's step father to do a reading and he picked out two that he liked.  I will have to get back to you on the titles, but they were lovely and meant a lot that he picked them for us. 

We had that Sonnet 116 that Britwife posted, and also a much-abbreviated edit of Whitman's Song of the Open Road, including (among others) the following passages which I love:

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;   
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

And:

I give you my love, more precious than money,   
I give you myself, before preaching or law;   
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Ours was a civil & entirely non-religious ceremony as well.

I really like this one:

"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 blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two."

--from Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Our ceremony was performed by a Unitarian minister, but all of the readings were secular. I'd have to look at our ceremony but off the top of my head, our first reading was from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran.

Our ceremony was only about 10 minutes long. A couple of readings, the vows, rings, and we were done!

Those are all really lovely ideas! If and when the bf ever pops the question, I'll have to start planning our civil non-religious ceremony, so this all helps a lot! Much to his chagrin, I've been in a really wedding-y mood lately - scouring the web for cakes, dresses, etc. 

Look out - Guy!  Heeeee!

We sort of carried the travel/friendship/companionship theme in our ceremony a bit (considering travel is our collective passion) -- between Song of the Open Road and me coming down to Moon River.

Two drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me

Sorry, I forgot to mention the 'how we chose them' question.

Our officiant provided us with a book that she had put together with different readings for the different segments of the ceremony. There were around 20 choices for each segment, and she was also happy to let us choose our own readings if we wanted to.

My fiance and I spent a day sitting in different rooms reading through the book, and choosing our top choices for each. We came back together to go over our choices, and for every one we had at least one in common. We went back to our officiant with the choices, and she helped us tweak things for ease of flow during the ceremony.

It was actually a really fun day, where we got to take time out and really discuss what the readings meant to us, and what we wanted the ceremony to be like. It turned out to be very stress free and fun.

Perhaps you can find a list of potential readings and orders of ceremony online, and go through a similar exercise with your fiance.

Two drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me

Only one of my favourite songs ever!! 

Only one of my favourite songs ever!! 

 

Wow! Thanks for all of your ideas. Ilike the idea of having a friend of faily member help pick something out. And maybe having someone sing. There's so much to think about!

We were lucky that Keith's sister is a fabulous singer and she wrote a song for us and sang it while we signed the register.  It was amazing.  One of the readings we had was Blessing for a Marriage by James Dillet Freeman.