Jeez, you guys. I haven’t done a Wedding Wednesday in a while! I’ve doing a lot of random parts of the wedding planning lately and one of those is picking out readings for the ceremony. I always keep a notebook of quotes that I like from books I read or poems I come across. Since I’m not having a bookish wedding myself (since obviously Will does not share this passion of mine), I do want to incorporate it in subtle ways and I think that a reading from a book I love would be great! I also put some shorter “love” quotes from books in here, even if they aren’t long enough for a reading, to maybe incorporate them into things like the program or something like that. The ones with asterisks are ones I’m really considering for the wedding!
, Charles Dickens“Once for all, I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom, and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you; so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
– RumiThe moment I heard my first love story I began seeking you,
not realizing the search was useless.
Lovers don’t meet somewhere along the way.
They’re in one another’s souls from the beginning.
I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. 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 center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you—and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. –
“The Velveteen Rabbit 
“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 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.”
by Jane Austen“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
by Nicole Krauss“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.”
by Tom Robbins“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”
by Philip Pullman
“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again… I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight…”
by Jonathan Safran Foer
“If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller’s felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.”
So which one is YOUR favorite? What other passages from books do you think would make a great reading for a wedding? Do share! I’m looking for more!
Can’t get enough of bookish weddings or planning a book themed wedding yourself? Check out bookish Save the Dates or realistic bookish ideas for your wedding.
About Jamie
AHHHHH JAMIE. That passage from VELVETEEN never fails to make me tear up. Or cry. Both of which I'm doing now. The Dickens one, though, has to be my personal favorite
I LOVE this post! I considered some of the same while I was still planning my wedding (we cancelled – felt like a waste of money since we're already married:P), but this is the reading I was going to use. It is not a traditional love reading, but it still brings tears to my eyes. Add the fact that my husband and I only ever met because he had Harry Potter listed as his favorite books in his online dating profile, and yeah – this is the one:
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."
That passage from Velveteen is one of the first things you read in my book, so obviously I have some tender affection for it, but the quote from Klauss's novel is just… ah, so breathtaking. *Happy sigh noises of amorous delight*
G.C.
I love love LOVE this post. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside and also want to cry (happy tears)!
Oh, so many things I love in this post. Neruda! The Truth About Forever! Pride and Prejudice! Jane Eyre! And I adore that passage from Great Expectations. Lovely. ♥
Oh gracious I was going to comment, but I'm having a moment from The Amber Spyglass. I'll be back after I'm done WEEPING.
I’m right there with you! One of the saddest happy endings EVER! Tears pouring down my face every time I read it.
But I do love nearly every quote above and below
YO!! This is so lovely! Pablo Neruda's poem is one of my VERY FAVORITE poems. It's just so swoony! *SIGH*
Also, one of my friends from library school got married recently, and while she didn't have any readings at her ceremony, she did put some passages into her program, and the quote from The Velveteen Rabbit was one of them. It was PERFCT. She also used the "real or not real" quote from Mockingjay.
Whatever you choose, these are all bee-you-tee-ful. <333
Okay, I can see through my tears now. There's a teeny tiny part of The Lover's Dictionary that I love so much. "…That someone like me could find someone like you — it renders me wordless…" It comes from the dumbfounded definition. I wrote it down in my little notebook.
All of these are very very precious quotes. I'd have to figure out how to work them all in! But myself, being a fangirl of TLD, I'd have my tiny snippet on the front of my program or on a gift tag or something, because in that part of the book, he was so speechless that he could find someone that could love him or even like him back.
I love this post and I think it is a purely wonderful way to incorporate books into your wedding! My favorites will have to be Sonnet 17, Jane Eyre, and of course The Truth About Forever but no matter what you pick, I think it will be lovely!
Ok I DIED and I might use this in my wedding!! Something I have been struggling with is My want to incorporate books, into my wedding while still be staying true to my theme and Also, cause then My Fiance will insist his love of Zombies be including (trust me he isn't joking, it took a full year to get him to compromise on having the zombie cake as a grooms cake and not our wedding cake) and another thing is wanting to include people in the wedding by doing readings, but I didn't want the typical stuff you hear at almost every wedding.
Point is, this is Genius!!!!
Can I cheat and say I love them all? This is a wonderful post. Like you, I enjoy collecting quotes from the books I read – and this sounds like a wonderful way to incorporate your love for reading into your wedding.
Okay, I've decided to not cheat and pick a favorite… And it's Sonnet 17
Love these! The reading from my outdoor wedding…
e.e. cummings: “i thank You God for most this amazing”
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings; and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt imaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake
and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
I used this one to, and my sister, who read it, gave us a framed copy of it printed beautifully that now hangs in our home and makes us happy every time we look at it.
OMG. e.e. cummings is one of my favorites! HOW in the world did I not think of him! One of my faves is I Carry Your Heart. THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS! *flails* must go break open my book of e.e. cummings poems!!
I love this post! I love that you included The Amber Spyglass, it is one of my favourites and soooo overlooked. Just in case you are interested, one of my favourite poems that always comes back to me is Edwin Morgan, 'When You Go'
When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.
Oh my goodness, that quote from The Amber Spyglass just brought me right back and almost had me crying again. The ending of that book seriously almost killed me.
The Rumi quote is my favorite, I'd say, but I think the Jane Eyre quote would be perfect for a wedding!
The Sonnet 17 quote is truly something, though. The language is so beautiful!
So those three get my vote, for what it's worth
My favorite is Sarah Dessen's! Short, sweet, and exact. It's one of my favorite quotes and would be perfect for your wedding!
My friend who recently got married used the one from Velveteen Rabbit. I love it! This is a wonderful post. I really like them all.
This is such a cute idea!!! I love the Velveteen Rabbit one!
I am in a Neruda mood as of late, I think that his writings are brill. But the Jane Eyre is perfection. Oh I like them all in so many ways!
These are some great options. In fact, I wish I would have seen this last year when I was writing my own wedding ceremony. I think we ended up using a Keats poem and a few songs instead of something from a book? Is it terrible that I don't remember? I love that Everything is Illuminated quote. I think you are off to a great start!
My favorite are "Jane Eyre" and "Pride & Prejudice". I love this author and I love the XIX century <3
We made the Neruda one a part of our wedding! I love it!
This is such a fun idea. I think my favorite is the one from Pride & Prejudice. Congrats on your upcoming wedding.
What a lovely post
Hard to choose one but maybe a suggestion could be to use some of the smaller quotes as table names?
Good luck with the wedding!
Hi, I am getting married 5days before you and came across your blog when searching for readings. I really like the Velveteen Rabbit piece! Thanks for the inspiration! I am also dying to know if you picked the dress you shared because it is the one I am wearing!
I DID! Yay for having the same dress!!
i love your wedding wednesdays. I got married two years ago and had a dog book themed wedding. My hubby and I met through our love of dogs. I am a elementary school librarian so I love to read. Hence books and dogs. Here's an idea that my guests loved. We had a free library book give away table. It was part of the favors. I collected books for about a year and then set up a table so that people could just take one that they fancied. I only had 2 books left mainly because they fell behind the table and no one saw them. Just a tip. Hope things are coming together. Thanks for the posts I love them.
That’s such an awesome idea! Thanks for sharing!!
My husband and I had this read at our wedding.
“…In marriage the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, in a good marriage each person appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude and thus shows him the greatest faith he can bestow. The being together of two human beings is an impossibility; where it nonetheless seems to be present it is a limitation, a mutual agreement that robs one or both parts of their fullest freedom and development. Yet once it is recognized that even among the closest people there can remain infinite distances, a wonderful coexistence can develop once they succeed in loving the vastness between them that afford them the possibility of seeing each other in their full gestalt before a vast sky!
For this reason the following has to be the measure for one’s rejection or choice: whether one wishes to stand guard at another person’s solitude and whether one is inclined to position this same person at the gates of one’s own depth of whose existence he learns only through what issues forth from this great darkness, clad in festive garb.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life, p. 36.
Trans. Ulrich Baer.
These readings would be fabulous as part of table decor. I.E.
naming a table “The Amber Spyglass Table” and having the quote on the back of the menus for that table/something equally awesome.
How sweet The Velveteen Rabbit excerpt was! Paulo Celho’s book The Alchemist deals a lot with explaining love. One of my favorites from the book reads:
“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
So I saw this through Pintrest and just thought I’d share a short favorite love quote of my own.
“Love is many things, none of them logical.”
From The Princess Bride
LOVE IT! Thanks for sharing that one!
I like the Rumi one. Another favorite of mine is from Albert Camus’ book The Plague:
“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”
So I just found this through Pinterest, and what a wonderful list! I started crying as soon as I read the Velveteen Rabbit quote, and I was almost sobbing by the end of the Amber Spyglass quote. I am going to try to find a way to work one (or both) of these into my wedding. The only problem is the mess I know I’ll be then – if they make me so emotional on a Tuesday, what will I do on my wedding day??? Hehe!
Haha I feel you on that one! I tear up at everything wedding. I’m going to be a weepy, sobby mess!!
I LOVE the velveteen rabbit it’s making me rethink the one I have picked out:
The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are square in your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed down from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving, to hide it, 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 ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon in God’s presence.
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know, or how you came here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments.
“We are all a little weird and Life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
-Dr. Suess
LOVE LOVE LOVE! This is so beyond perfect for my fiance and I!
Thanks for sharing!!
Poetry: Sonnet XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
And…Literature: From Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
…he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a might stranger…. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
And…Literature: From From This Day Forward, Steve and Cokie Roberts
Marriage is serious business and hard work. It’s not just becoming roommates, it’s becoming soul mates; it’s not just signing a license, it’s sharing a life. That explains our title. The words in the marriage ceremony “from this day forward” are scary. At the moment a couple exchanges those vows, they can never know what they really mean, what hills and valleys stretch out in front of them in the years ahead. But if you take the words seriously, there’s no going back. There’s only the future, unlimited and unknowable, and the promise to make the journey together.
I love those and the one from Jane Eyre which will be used in my wedding. I was reading it for the millionth time when I met my fiancé.
We have the same wedding date!! I have the same issue as you do, my soon to be hubby doesn’t share my love of books. I love these readings though, they would be great! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing. Here’s my favorite:
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
XIV.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.
~~~~and~~~~~
XLIII.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
These are lovely! I have two favorites, myself. One is a little more spiritual and the second is just plain gorgeous:
“ I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me. I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding you love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.” – Donald Miller, “Blue Like Jazz”
“You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.”
-from “The Country of Marriage”, Wendell Berry
This is my favourite!
” 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 its you are whatever 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.”