Weddingbee Blog

One of the other (unsurprising) ways we’ll be personalizing our ceremony is by choosing readings that really suit us. I love the idea of readings, but it was really hard to find ones we both liked because we’re not gushingly romantic people and we’re not religious, so that took out a pretty big number of possibilities. I also wanted to find something relatively unique, which I think we all know is pretty tricky in the world of weddings today! Here’s what we came up with.

With the help of Indiebride and in particular this amazing thread I found this excerpt from Miss Manners Guide to the Turn of the Millennium by Judith Martin.

Source

While exclusionary interest in one other human being, which is what we call courtship, is all very exciting in the stages of discovery, there is not enough substance in it for a lifetime, no matter how fascinating the people or passionate the romance. The world, on the other hand, is chock full of interesting and curious things. The point of the courtship—marriage—is to secure someone with whom you wish to go hand in hand through this source of entertainment, each making discoveries, and then sharing some and merely reporting others. Anyone who tries to compete with the entire world, demanding to be someone’s sole source of interest and attention, is asking to be classified as a bore. “Why don’t you ever want to talk to me?” will probably never start a satisfactory marital conversation. “Guess what?” will probably never fail.

I love this reading because:

1. I love etiquette books, so this reading reflects that. I know that’s pretty weird of me, but I like them!
2. It’s not sappy
3. I like the fact that the language is a bit formal and dated, because I think it fits in well with the vintage feeling of our wedding.
4. It actually reflects how we both feel about marriage. We love the idea that we’re partners, but that it’s still up to us to remain actively engaged in our own pursuits, since that will ultimately make us better and more interesting people and spouses to each other.

As for our second reading I actually can’t give you too much information on that because I have no clue what it’s going to be like. My baby sister is a fabulous writer so we’ve asked her to write something for the ceremony. Knowing her it could be anything from a poem, to a story, to a full scale musical theatre production (I’m not kidding. She performed some of a potential wedding musical on one of our walks last summer!), or anything else in between.

My zany little sis about to go bungee jumping in New Zealand:

and here’s an example of her, um, dancing skills (she’s the one in purple):

She was a bit nervous at first because I didn’t really give her any guidelines and she was scared we wouldn’t like what she came up with. I pointed out that the special part for us is that she is taking the time to write something for our wedding ceremony and no matter what we’re going to love it. I can’t wait to hear what she comes up with.

What have you chosen for your ceremony readings?