Katie & Justin

The good part about designing your own wedding ceremony is that you can do whatever you want with it. The bad part is that means the choices are endless!

For weeks I’ve been researching ideas for our wedding readings in the hopes of finding something both sweet and thoughtful but not too cheesy, something that feels like us.

A typical Catholic wedding features two or three readings from the Bible. From what I’ve been told a typical Jewish ceremony doesn’t have any readings. We decided to do two readings but to make them non-traditional.

Because the internet is awesome, I found a ton of great options from a wide variety of sources, including books, music, poems and movies. Over the last several weeks I’ve been saving interesting passages here and there until I had one great big massive list. From there, Justin chose one and I chose another one.

I’ll save our final selections for the ceremony, but in the meantime, here are some of the other passages I found that were cool but didn’t make the final cut.

The Road by Cormac Mccarthy

“Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”

The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger

The story of a leaf who isn’t ready to let go from the tree.
And then, high up on an icy branch, a scarlet flash.
One more leaf holding tight.
“You’re here?” called the Little Yellow Leaf.
“I am,” said the Little Scarlet Leaf.
“Like me!” said the Little Yellow Leaf.
Neither spoke.
Finally… “Will you?” asked the Little Scarlett Leaf.
“I will!” said the Little Yellow Leaf.
And one, two, three, they let go and soared.

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 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.”

 

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

“People say they ‘find’ love, as if it were an object hidden under a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable.”

Les Mis by Victor Hugo

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

A History of Love by Nicole Krauss

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Allegiant by Veronica Roth

“I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”

A Tapestry of Love

Just as two very different threads woven in opposite directions can form a beautiful tapestry,
so can your two lives merge together to form a beautiful marriage.

To make your marriage work will take love.
Love should be the core of your marriage;
love is the reason you are here.
But it will also take trust – to know in your hearts
you want the best for each other.
It will take dedication – to stay open to one another;
to learn and to grow together even when this is not so easy to do.

It will take faith – to always be willing to go forward to tomorrow,
never really knowing what tomorrow will bring.

And it will take commitment – to hold true to a journey you both now will share together.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

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.

I love you by Brynne S

Just three little words
don’t seem like enough
for someone whose smile
still brightens my day,
whose touch can make me forget
the rest of the world.

They don’t seem like enough
for someone who’s always been there
to celebrate with me
when everything goes my way
and to hold my hand
when my whole world
seems to fall apart.

But even though “I Love You”
can’t express the depth
of my feelings for you.
I hope you know what’s in my heart.
Because loving you
means more to me
than anything in the world
and it always will

Loving the wrong person

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us.
But if you’ve been through enough relationships,
you begin to suspect there’s no right person,
just different flavors of wrong.

Why is this?
Because you yourself are wrong in some way,
and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way.
But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness.

It isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons,
your unsolvable problems – the ones that make you truly who you are –
that you’re ready to find a life-long mate.
Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for.

You’re looking for the wrong person.
But not just any wrong person:
the right wrong person – someone you lovingly gaze upon and think,
“This is the problem I want to have.”

Marriage Fulfills the Dreams and Love Two People Share

Everyone searches for one special person
They can share their lives with.

The other half who makes them whole,
Like two notes blending together to make a beautiful song,
Or the colours that complement
Each other to form a rainbow.

It is everyone’s wish to have a lifetime of sunny days,
A rainbow after every storm;
A lifetime of loving and living and growing and giving,
Of sharing and caring; a lifetime of days together,
Learning from the bad times and cherishing the good times.

Marriage is everything your heart desires
And the strength, courage and determination to work for it.

In marriage you take care of each other’s heart
And hold on to what you share.

You hold it gently so it doesn’t smother
And firmly so it doesn’t slip away.

Hold it so that it can grow
And you can grow together
And live and laugh and love together always.

Maybe

Maybe…We are supposed to meet the wrong people before meeting the right one so that, when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift

Maybe…it is true that we don’t know what we have got until we lose it, but it is also true that we don’t know what we have been missing until it arrives

Maybe…the happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way

Maybe…the best kind of love is the kind you can sit on a sofa together and never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you’ve ever had

Maybe…you shouldn’t go for looks; they can deceive. Don’t go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile, because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

Maybe…you should hope for enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, and enough hope to make you happy

Maybe… Love is not about finding the perfect person, it’s about learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.’

The Magic of Love

Love is like magic, and it always will be,

For love still remains life’s sweet mystery.

Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange,

And there’s nothing in life that love cannot change!

Love can transform the most commonplace Into beauty
and splendor and sweetness and grace.

Love is unselfish, understanding and kind,

For it sees with its heart, and not with its mind.

Love is the answer that everyone seeks;

Love is the language that every heart speaks.

Love can’t be bought, it is priceless and free.

Love, like pure magic, is life’s sweet mystery!
I’ll Be There For You

I’ll be there my darling, through thick and through thin
When your mind’s in a mess and your head’s in a spin
When your plane’s been delayed, and you’ve missed the last train.

When life is just threatening to drive you insane
When your thrilling whodunit has lost its last page
When somebody tells you, you’re looking your age
When your coffee’s too cool, and your wine is too warm
When the forecast said “Fine”, but you’re out in a storm
When your quick break hotel, turns into a slum

And your holiday photos show only your thumb
When you park for five minutes in a resident’s bay

And return to discover you’ve been towed away
When the jeans that you bought in hope or in haste
Just stick on your hips and don’t reach round your waist
When the food you most like brings you out in red rashes
When as soon as you boot up the bloody thing crashes

So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear…
When you break a rule, when you act the fool
When you’ve got the flu, when you’re in a stew
When you’re last in the queue, don’t feel blue’cause
I’m telling you, I’ll be there.

As Your Like It

No sooner met but they looked;
No sooner looked but they loved;
No sooner loved but they sighed;
No sooner signed but they asked one another the reason;
No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage…

The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.17-9

One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.

 

 

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

“My mother’s last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love. … Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word ‘love’ to the people you love so when it matters most to say it, you will.

We’re all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.”

 

Les Mis by 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.”

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman

“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again… I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me.”

The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life … You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. ”

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

“I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything.”

The One by Kiera Cass

“My love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through my sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion.

You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that’s all it would manage to do.”

For the end of the night: A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

“There are no happy endings. Endings are sad, so let’s have a happy beginning and a happy middle.”