Asking a parent, friend or family member to do a reading as part of your ceremony can be a lovely way to make it more personal. But choosing the right reading can be tricky – where do you start?
The fun part, I think, is that wedding readings don’t have to be super traditional – they can be a bit quirky or fun, if that feels more like “you”.
At our wedding, my sister in law read a Margaret Atwood poem for us, which starts, “Marriage is not / a house or even a tent / it is before that, and colder…”
On the other end of the spectrum, a recent wedding script I worked on included a reading by the mother of the bride of a bible verse – a verse that had been read on her own wedding day, that she was now reading at her daughter’s ceremony. Such a special gift!
The loveliest readings, I think, are the ones that feel authentic to you.
Here’s one of my favourite recent discoveries – a poem by Ada Limón.
What I Didn’t Know Before
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother. A horse gives way to another
horse and then suddenly there are two horses,
just like that. That’s how I loved you. You,
off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
When you work with me on your vows or ceremony, you’ll get access to a library of readings I have curated, ranging from traditional to fairly different. From poems to song lyrics to extracts from movies and TV shows.