Weddingbee Blog

This week marks nine years since my first date with PDog.

That first date lasted for 11 hours. It involved a gelato, and the swings of a local park, and a minor car accident, and that teenage feeling like you’re going to explode of happiness at the end of the night—the feeling that makes you dance around the taupe carpet in your bedroom and text all your girlfriends even though it’s late. I built my entire adult life around that feeling, and it has served me well.

So, in honor of our relationship’s birthday, I’m ducking out of recaps for a moment. Instead, I’ll be sharing our almost-ceremony readings because…I think the passages that we considered say a lot about where nine years has taken us. The passages I’m drawn to always reflect the quiet magic of a well-aged, worn-in love. There’s so much romance in the long-term, in what happens after those first-kiss fireworks and the can’t-sleep-after-that-date butterflies. What I mean is: I see more beauty in our everyday love than I do in the movie scenes we all swoon over.

It was really important to me that our readings be personal, that their words mean something to us already, outside of wedding planning. And, bibliophage that I am, there were a lot of options. These were the top contenders.

Short Story

David Sedaris’ The End of the Affair, an essay about daily life in a long-term relationship that is both accurate and poignant. But it’s really long for a ceremony reading, and I worried the our guests wouldn’t quite get that it is romantic because it is not overtly romantic. This was the hardest parts to give up: “Call me unimaginative, but I still can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be with…Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that’s for beginners.”

Poetry

I don’t love much poetry, but I love Yeats. My favorite is When You Are Old—which you may have noticed if you also love Yeats and have read my Weddingbee profile. Alas, PDog deemed it too sad for a wedding (he’s right), and Brown Penny wasn’t the right sentiment either.

There are also moments of Frost that I really love. One such moment is The Master Speed and, in particular the last few lines, which are inscribed on the graves of Frost and his wife.

Two such as you with such a master speed

Cannot be parted nor be swept away

From one another once you are agreed

That life is only life forevermore

Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Well-known Readings

I toyed with readings that weren’t especially personal (i.e. didn’t have any history or meaning for me except that I really liked them when I read them in someone else’s ceremony). Nonetheless, I pondered a modern standard Fulgham, and a cheeky Auden and an irreverent Nash.

Song Lyrics

I even toyed with favorite song lyrics, which never quite sound the way I want them to when spoken.

When it comes to singer/songwriters, Patty Griffin is, like, it for me. So…I seriously considered a reading of the song Don’t Come Easy. I think the chorus could be wedding vows, for those of us who don’t always expect love to shield us from hard times- but, rather, fish us out when we’re inevitably in over our heads.

(All the live videos had fairly poor sound quality, so you get this photo montage.)

You’re out there walking down a highway / and all of the signs got blown away / sometimes you wonder if you’re walking in the wrong direction / But if you break down / I’ll drive out and find you / If you forget my love / I’ll try to remind / And stay by you / When it don’t come easy.

Literature

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.

- Louis de Bernières, from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling… Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go… But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - love as distinct from “being in love” - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God… “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”

- CS Lewis, from Mere Christianity

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

- Madeleine L’Engle, from The Irrational Season

Even- wait for it- NPR interviews

I think that we’re led to believe that love is fleeting, but I reckon, when you get a little older and your boat gets battered around a bit, you realize that love is really more a decision. It’s an opportunity to exist with somebody at their best and at their worst, and in doing so the reflections that you get in one another become the scars that you covet because those are those simple secrets that are yours alone. And those things are not celebrated in movie love. That’s the real stuff that we all fear is very easy to walk away from. I guess I’m lucky. My folks aren’t together, but I know people that are together and that are old together and their journeys come with their bumps and bruises. I think that if you are of a mind that you ultimately celebrate those bumps and bruises, even though they might be years in the making, they will be the things that you celebrate and that you cherish and that will be the character of your relationship.- Hawksley Workman via NPR’s All Things Considered

So, there you have it. We wound up using none of these, but more on that during your regularly-scheduled recaps. Happy 9-er, PDog, and if you want anymore gushing you can just read it here, here or here.

How did you choose your ceremony readings?