Wedding reading from literature

[np90]

Hi everyone,

I am getting married this year and thinking about readings for our (non-religious) ceremony. I would love to take a passage from one of my favourite books/an author I admire/something that is in my 'style', but have yet to find anything.

One of my all time favourite books is 100 Years of Solitude, but I suspect that Love in the Time of Cholera may have something more suitable, though I did not like it quite as much as 100 years.

I also love pretty much anything from Louis de Bernieres and recently read Anna Karenin, which I enjoyed.

In more modern fiction I like Kurt Vonnegut, Irvine Welsh and David Mitchell - but not sure how much suitable I would find there.

I guess I am looking for something that touches on love, but not in a sickly sentimental way and is more about about two people finding each other and commitment.

My sister had 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' as a reading at her ceremony which I am considering, as I think the sentiment is exactly right and it is lighthearted and a poem we remember from our childhood.

Does anyone know of any specific passages from the ideas I mention above (am thinking I will need to reread them all to find anything if not!) or any other suggestions for me?

Thanks for your help

[Jazz_]

Not really sure what you're after... (these are from Love in the Time of Cholera - not too "cheerful" though)

To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.

It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

[dfloyd]

the love between Lara and Zhivago in Pasternack's Dr. Zhivago. I'm sure you can find something appropriate there, perhaps while Lara's Theme is playing in the background.

[np90]

thanks! that's helpful. I like the Love in the Time of Cholera passages especially - they are cheery enough for me! Perhaps I will re-read that and 100 years to see what else I find as I haven't read them for a while, so it is a good excuse.

[kiki1982]

Ok, I don't know anything of Marquez, but I do know a nice piece of text. From Hugo:

'On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel, smiling, with his finger on his lips.

The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary where the celebration of love accomplishes itself.

There must be a glow above such houses. The joy which they contain must be able to escape in brilliancy through the stones in the walls, and replace the darkness. It is impossible that this sacred and fatal celebration should not send a celestial radiance into the infinite. Love is the sublime cauldron wherein the union of man and woman is accomplished; the one being, the triple being, the final being, human trinity is the result of it. This birth of two souls into one, must be an emotion for darkness. The lover is the priest; the overjoyed virgin is bewildered. Something of this joy goes to God. Where true marriage is, that is, where there is love, the ideal enters. A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the shadows. If it were given to the eye of the flesh to grasp the tremendous and enchanting visions of the uppermost life, it is probable that it would see the nightly forms, the winged strangers, the blue passers by of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around the luminous house, satisfied, blessing, showing one another the virgin wife gently dazed, bearing the reflection of human bliss on their divine faces. If at that supreme hour, the wedded couple, blinded by desire and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their room a faint rustling of wings. Perfect happiness includes the solidarity of angels. That dark little alcove has all heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach each other to create, it is impossible that there should not be, above that indescribable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of the stars.

This is true happiness. There is no joy apart from this. Love, that is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.

To love, or to have loved,--that is enough. Do not ask anything more. One must not seek to find another pearl in the dark folds of life. To love is completion.'

Les Misérables, Volume V, Book VI, Chapter II: Jean Valjean has still his arm in a sling.

Hope it helped. Hope it's not too sentimental. :blush:

[kelby_lake]

The last stanza of Dover Beach is nice (bit depressing though):
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Maybe a bit miserable but:
“Think how you love me,” she whispered. “I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night.” (Tender is The Night)

All the good marriage quotes are relatively miserable :)