Choosing a wedding reading is a personal thing. It has to speak to you, evoke a memory or feeling and then you'll know when you've found the right one for the two of you.
Our wedding reading ideas are handpicked by our wonderful Celebrants and today's poem has been chosen by Janni Knox, a wedding celebrant based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She shares her thoughts on her chosen poem, Wedding Thoughts: All I Know About Love by Neil Gaiman...
"I love this wedding reading so much because it’s about love, warmth and acceptance. The poem gives a message that a marriage will be as unique as the two individuals getting married and that’s okay. When I got married over thirty years ago, I really wasn’t expecting anything to change. I viewed marriage as a formality, something that would please our parents and then a big party afterward. To my surprise I discovered that being married did feel different for me, there was additional contentment and I found something that I hadn’t known was missing. This poem reminds me of all of that, and the excitement of starting off on a new adventure into the future with the person that you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with, by your side."
Wedding Thoughts: All I Know About Love
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean.
Somebody's got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It's not two broken halves becoming one.
It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,
and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that's all I know about love.
Janni says; "I feel I have the best job in the world as a humanist wedding Celebrant. It’s such a privilege to meet amazing couples, to hear their love story and why they are choosing to marry. It is such a delight to tell each couple’s story in the way they want and celebrate their wedding day in the way they want. Much as I relish what I do, I think it is really special to share the ceremony and include different voices with a wedding reading or two, so these wedding reading ideas are perfect for inspiration"
Find out more about Neil Gaiman here or take a look at our other wedding reading ideas for more inspiration for your wedding ceremony.
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