Weddingbee Blog

A conversation between Mr. Parfait and me:

Miss P.: I’m a reading person. I understand it better when I read it.
Mr. P.: I’m a radar person. I only understand things through radars, so if you wrote me a note, I wouldn’t understand it. You’d have to send pictures of your day in a radar!

This is just a tiny peek at the teasing I must endure on a daily basis! Lucky for Mr. P., he’s awfully cute and, thus, awfully forgivable. But it’s true what I said, and since I understand (and like) things better when I can see the words, I’ve saved some passages and poems that I hope to incorporate in the wedding. I can picture parts of these in the ceremony, on reception banners, and in our wedding album!

You, you only, exist
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.

-Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I know this last one is commonly recited, but its popularity doesn’t make it any less thrilling. All of the passages above have a sweetness and excitement that I adore!

ROMEO
Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
Be heap’d like mine and that thy skill be more
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue
Unfold the imagined happiness that both
Receive in either by this dear encounter.

JULIET
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess
I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The words spoken just before their wedding! How appropriate. He only asks her to sing, but he asks in the most loving, poetic, and gentle way. They’re so captivated by one another.

I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

-Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

Sigh… so sad, so beautiful. I melt whenever Henry describes Clare and his love for her.

Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
Of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
His dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
Longed for
As the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
Spent in rough water where his ship went down
Under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
To crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
In joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

-Homer, The Odyssey

It gives me chills to think of the overwhelming joy and relief they felt when they finally reunited. This also came up in The Time Traveler’s Wife. *Wipes away a tear.*

Sigh, maybe these last few passages are too tear-inducing for our wedding. I love every line of Romeo and Juliet, but their story is so sad. And all the struggles and longing that Odysseus and Penelope survived… and the fate of Henry and Clare… oh, these would have me crying through the whole day. My new task should be finding more jubilant passages! Any recommendations?

Are you incorporating any favorite poems or stories in your wedding?