Can you have readings in a civil ceremony

And in return, love loves you and never stops. We think alike. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realise how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. I esteem and admire you above all human beings. You are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half.

You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women. And you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling… You are now all my own… How will my soul find room for its happiness? It seems already bursting! Marriage is a commitment to life, the best that two people can find and bring out in each other. It offers opportunities for sharing and growth that no other relationship can equal. It is a physical and an emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime.

And there may come times when one partner is heartbroken or ailing, and the love of the other may resemble the tender caring of a parent or child. Marriage deepens and enriches every facet of life. Happiness is fuller, memories are fresher, commitment is stronger, even anger is felt more strongly, and passes away more quickly. Marriage understands and forgives the mistakes life is unable to avoid. It encourages and nurtures new life, new experiences, new ways of expressing a love that is deeper than life.

When two people pledge their love and care for each other in marriage, they create a spirit unique unto themselves which binds them closer than any spoken or written words. Marriage is a promise, a potential made in the hearts of two people who love each other and takes a lifetime to fulfill. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible.

A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king.

In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair. Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. It survives and develops like the universe itself only by perpetual discovery. The only right love is that between couples whose passion leads them both, one through the other, to a higher possession of their being.

Put your faith in the spirit which dwells between the two of you. You have each offered yourself to the other as a boundless field of understanding, of enrichment, of mutually increased sensibility. There alone, as you know, in spirit, which is arrived through flesh, you will find no disappointments, no limits.

There alone the skies are ever open for your love; there alone lies the great road ahead. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that.

We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. This is a word we use to plug holes with. Add lace and you can sell it. We insert it also in the one empty space on the printed form that comes with no instructions.

There are whole magazines with not much in them but the word love, you can rub it all over your body and you can cook with it too. As for the weed- seedlings nosing their tough snouts up among the lettuces, they shout it. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness.

This word is not enough but it will have to do. You can hold on or let go. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert.

What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. And when two such people encounter each other, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only.

It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel—I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely; a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you—and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

And now it's clear as this promise, That we're making two reflections into one. Music is known to evoke powerful memories, so think about what songs may have been playing during key moments in your relationship—they don't have to be love songs, just meaningful to you as a couple. My whole heart. Will be yours forever. This is a beautiful start, To a lifelong love letter. Tell the world that we finally got it all right. I choose you. I will become yours and you will become mine I am not scared of the elements I am underprepared, But I am willing.

And even better I get to be the other half of you. The book of love is long and boring. No one can lift the damn thing. It's full of charts and facts, some figures and instructions for dancing. But I, I love it when you read to me. And you, You can read me anything. The book of love has music in it. In fact, that's where music comes from.

Some of it is just transcendental, Some of it is just really dumb. But I, I love it when you sing to me. And you, You can sing me anything. The book of love is long and boring, And written very long ago. It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes, And things we're all too young to know.

But I, I love it when you give me things. And you, You ought to give me wedding rings. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies ; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.

Because she is my rose. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Brides. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes.

In this section. How to Choose Music for Your Ceremony. Non-Religious Readings We Love. The Ultimate Wedding Ceremony Guide. Part of. This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The Bible quote above is taken from the English Standard Version. Because of its origin, it is allowed at religious ceremonies only.

The above is said in the film Sleepless in Seattle , when Sam Baldwin Tom Hanks is talking about why he loved his wife. Have you got a biro I can borrow? Oh give me a pen and some paper Give me a chisel or a camera A piano and a box of rubber bands I need room for choreography And a darkroom for photography Tie the brush into my hands. The above poem is now a popular alternative reading for weddings! Your email address will not be published. Post Comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish.

We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven…. What a grand thing it is to be loved!

What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

Love is to join and separate, To walk alone and together, To find a laughing freedom That lonely isolation does not permit. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. I will love you forever; whatever happens. Every atom of me and every atom of you.

The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice. Although it was cold he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage. He is also quite clever though I will not tell him this for now.

She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur. Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things? Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping? Besides, I am not unkeen on shopping either. Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old. Look at them. Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs. Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together.

For the sun is warm. And the world is a beautiful place. Every atom of me and every atom of you I will be here, When you feel like being quiet, When you need to speak your mind I will listen. As sure as seasons were made for change, Our lifetimes were made for years, I will be here. I will hold you, to watch you grow in beauty, And tell you all the things you are to me. I will be here. Which is your favourite?

Check out these extra links for even more inspiration. Choosing your wedding readings The world is full of beautiful writing on love - from passionate and intense Bronte novels to light-hearted poems by Edward Monkton, there's something for everyone out there. Union by Robert Fulghum You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. For after today you shall say to the world — This is my husband.