Help! Bridesmaid in need of a love poem/ reading etc!

If they're the kind of couple who have had to fight to keep together I recommend Good Timber by Douglas Mallock (as the other half of an army officer who's currently in Afghan it was particularly resonant with me!) Xx

• 12 years ago
• 1

I love performance poetry. If you're feeling brave I'd say write something yourself. It will mean a lot more to them and you'll get a lot more kudos for doing so. I'm writing one for my sisters wedding.

• 12 years ago
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Thanks Victoria.... That's an intriguing possibility actually. Very apt here too. I'll look into that.

As far as writing one is concerned, I did consider it but genuinely writing isn't one of my talents. I wish it were.......!

• 12 years ago
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It's not a poem, but I went to a wedding a couple of years ago where one of the bridesmaids read a section from Captain Correlli's Mandolin (happens to be one of my favourite books) and make me cry. May not be as funny as you were looking for though...

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 root was 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 promises 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 blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
from: 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' by Louis de Bernieres

• 12 years ago
• 4

That is so beautiful Amber. Thank you for sharing it.

• 12 years ago
• 5

At my daughters wedding last month there was a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. I googled it and came up with this.

BY Margery Williams

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. 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 all 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."

• 12 years ago
• 6

Heck! These are brilliant ideas..... going to start sifting through all these this weekend...... Thanks so so much.

• 12 years ago
• 7

This is really fantastically romantic and spiritual - 'Infinite Love' by Rabindranath Tagore. This is for people who feel they know eachother so well that they feel as if they've 'been around,' or could have been around, together before! You can search for it on google, as there are several translations, and one may appeal more than another. It is short but 'hits the spot' - moves me to tears every time. It's the one I would have - but that's just me!

All the best with it.

P.S. I've heard the 'Captain Corelli' excerpt at a recent wedding too. There appear to be books that contain suitable readings/poems, but I don't own one,and I can't offer a title.

• 12 years ago
• 8

I asked one of my witnesses to read
i carry your heart with me by e e cummings

I was weeping after it!

---

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

---

just reading it again is making me tingle!!

He wishes for the cloths of heaven by WB Yeats is also a lovely short piece,

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Also wrote my own in honour of my husband -- doesn't have to a masterpiece, just simple and personal.

• 12 years ago
• 9

Here's one that I really love -


I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
- Pablo Neruda

• 12 years ago
• 10

I read this at a wedding earlier this year and it went down very well!

Us Two - A reading from Pooh Bear - mid version
~ By AA Milne~


"Wherever I am, there's always Pooh; there's always Pooh and me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do, "where are you going today?" says Pooh... "Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.
"Let's go together," says Pooh, says he. "Let's go together", says Pooh.

"Let's look for the dragons," I said to Pooh. "Yes, let's," said Pooh to Me. We crossed the river and found a few... "Yes those are dragons all right," said Pooh. "As soon as I saw their beaks I knew. That's what they are," said Pooh, said he. "That's what they are," said Pooh.

"Let's frighten the dragons," I said to Pooh. "That's right," said Pooh to Me. "I'm not afraid," I said to Pooh, And held his paw and shouted "Shoo! Silly old dragons!" and off they flew. "I wasn't afraid," said Pooh, said he, "I'm never afraid with you."

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh; there's always Pooh and me. "What would I do?" I said to Pooh, "If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said... "True, It isn't much fun for One, but Two can stick together," says Pooh, says he. "That's how it is," says Pooh.

• 12 years ago
• 11

Hello again,

Apologies for not replying sooner, but I just wanted to say a huge thank you for all the suggestions.

I gave the bride a selection including all those here which made choosing very tough indeed.

Some of them have been written out and will be on the dinner tables and I'm in the end going to be reading my own composition! Never done that before so a little bit nervous to say the least.

Wedding day tomorrow!

Thanks again and all the best
Becky

• 12 years ago
• 12