08/30/10
by Hope Ramsay
One of the things about being the author of romance stories, is that it gives me a chance to write about one of life’s important passages — that moment when a man and woman leave their respective families, and through love, create a new family.
No doubt there are evolutionary and adaptive reasons why marriage is important to the perpetuation of the species. But from my perspective there isn’t any happier occasion than a wedding. Births are cool, too, but people don’t throw big parties for births, the way they go all out for weddings.
Next Sunday I will be attending a wedding that I’ve waited decades for. My older brother is getting married to the woman he’s been living with for at least fifteen years. This is his second marriage, but his first wedding. He eloped the first time when he was nineteen, thereby robbing everyone of a wedding that should have happened back in 1969. That marriage didn’t survive.
But the relationship we’ll be celebrating on Sunday is one of those wonderful ones where everyone sighs and says, “thank God he found her when he did.”
So, the entire family is coming to this wedding. His kids by the first marriage are planning it. There will be food and fun and music. It will be the celebration that is always implied at the end of every romance story, even though the bride is in her fifties and groom is sixty-three.
I have been asked to provide a reading at the ceremony. Being the main word person in a family of engineers, it’s not the first time I’ve been asked to come up with something pithy. I have a file folder filled with wedding readings that run the gamut from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians to Persian poetry.
But I’m always looking for new ideas. So for this Monday, share your favorite wedding reading, poem, toast, or story and help me celebrate my big brother’s wedding.
20 Responses
I had the Mennonite poet Julia Kasdorf read at my wedding. Can’t find the exact poem now, but she used the image of knocking two muddy boots together for the way knocking two bodies or lives together can get the old, useless stuff loose and leave what works to do its job. The book she read from was “Sleeping Preacher,” and man, that gal could do the words, you know?
Any of her poems available online?
Rats. I went looking for this book and it’s not readily available — at least not in time for me to get a copy of it before the wedding. Sadly, not available on Kindle. Not available at Borders. And I’d have to pay an arm and a leg to have it overnighted. *sigh*
Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 is my favorite (http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/29.html), right after Yeats’ “When You Are Old” but “WYAO” isn’t a wedding-type poem. I’ll look around for other ideas.
Enjoy the wedding, Hope; you hopeless romantic you!
Wow, I’m not familiar with this one. I always go for the one that starts: “Let us not to the marriage of true minds….”
But the couplet at the end of your suggestion is awesome:
“For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
Well, since we’re both songsters you’ll appreciate this. I sang a song to my first husband at the wedding. ‘I’ve been loving you a long, long time. I’ll make you a promise, and I won’t change my mind. You’ll never be alone, you’ll never be broken hearted. If you think I love you nowwww, I’ve just started.’
Unfortunately, he showed up drunk to the wedding and it was just a foreshadow of things to come.
The second one went better with the ‘Wither thou goest I will go’ scripture.
Well I’ve only been married to one guy — for more than three decades. But we used a song for our vows. Judi Collins — What I’ll give you since you’ve asked, from the ancient Wildflowers Album. We spoke the lyrics, alternating verses. My verse had the lyric, “I can show you all the songs I never sang to one man before.”
Here is a link to the song — probably my favorite wedding song of all times:
http://s0.ilike.com/play#Judy+Collins:Since+You+Asked:615142:s24432224.9515075.2304.0.2.50%2Cstd_213f4db0ea7847ff8c712d47374374e9
I’m very familiar with that song, but not for a wedding. I’m sure that made a lovely vow. I’ve sung at so many weddings over the years and had to sing some odd choices.
Oooh, that Shakespeare sonnet is wonderful. Enjoy the wedding, Hope.
Hope, I don’t care for weddings or funerals. I avoid both, but I love to write about weddings.
Kelly, I’m with you on both counts. Both make me cry uncontrollably and so I avoid them. I don’t even write weddings, I just get them to the point where you know there’s gonna be a HEA and then you supply your own wedding ideas.
Sorry, Hope, no help here. But best of luck and congrats to your brother–it’s gotta be terrific when you find the right one!
Well, I don’t actually write any weddings into my HEA endings, either. They seem almost gratuitous and by that point there shouldn’t be any conflict.
Except among the wedding guests. . .
I gather it’s the family conflict that keeps you away from Weddings?
I totally agree on the whole funeral thing.
My family went through a period where the younger generation was not old enough to be getting married and the only time the family got together was for funerals. The last few years, though, we’ve had a wedding every summer so it’s almost like a family reunion. Even though getting the family together almost always results in tension, I still love seeing my brothers and their children and their children’s children. It gives me warm fuzzies, even if sometime I want to strangle them all.
I hate funerals but I have to say some of our best family times have been at both my mother’s and father’s funerals. Probably because we’re spread all over all three coasts and it’s the only time we get to see each other. It’s sad but sweet reconnecting.
Hope~
My family has parties for all occasions, baptisms, weddings, funerals, doesn’t matter. I must say that all of our funerals this far have been after long and happy lives, no horrible devastating deaths, so the parties have ensued. I’m no help with something pithy to read at the wedding, but the best laugh I’ve had at any wedding was my own when my husband’s uncle went around to the wedding guests collecting all the keys to Stephen’s apartment from the beautiful women (some of which were pregnant) at the wedding and then finally reached into his pocket and pulled one off his own keychain. LOL
And how many keys were thereby produced?
When my younger brother got married, I was doing the music for his wedding, and he specifically told me that he wanted me to do something funny — but not to tell him beforehand.
This was an enormous amount of responsibility. I thought and thought and angsted about what to sing that would be funny but not offensive. Finally I hit on a genius idea. I sang “When I’m Sixty Four” and gave everyone who came to witness the wedding a kazoo and told them all to whip them out at the appropriate time during the instrumental portion of the song.
We have some awesome photos of Scott and his lovely bride, Virginia, laughing their backsides off. But, really, when you stop and think about it, When I’m Sixty Four is a totally appropriate wedding song.
This reminded me of the youtube video which was the happiest wedding day I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen this, you’ll die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
Marley,
That wedding on YouTube is a hoot!!!!!
OMG, Marley, I LOVE that video! 54M views and half of them are probably me.
Any couple who would come up with *that* plan for their wedding will be just fine in their marriage. More than anything, it takes a sense of humor to make it work. They’ll be just fine.
I don’t remember what vows were said at my wedding (23 yrs ago this Sunday) because our scheduled priest was sick and the fill-in could barely speak English. Couldn’t understand a word he said. My dad even fell asleep during part of it.
But one of the songs sung was “Always” because the lyrics were so appropriate:
And we both know, that our love will grow
And forever it will be you and me
Ooh your life is sun,
Chasing all the rain away,
When you come around you bring a brighter day
You’re the perfect one
For me and you forever we’ll be
And I will love you so for always
Happy anniversary! I love this song.
How about using the Beatles – when I’m 64. Seems somehow appropriate!