Ceremonies by Nikki Kulin, Costa Celebrant - Wedding readings
Marriage is not beautiful…Marriage is ugly, you see the absolute worst in someone.
You see them when they’re mad, sad, being stubborn, when they’re so unlovable they make you scream.
But you also get to see them when they are laughing so hard that tears run down their face, and they can’t help but let out those weird gargling noises.
You see them at 3am when the world is asleep except you two, and you’re eating in the middle of the kitchen floor.
You get to see the side of them that no one else does, and it’s not always pretty.
It’s snorting while laughing, it’s the tears when it feels like it’s all crashing down, it’s the farting, it’s the bedhead and bad breath, it’s the random dances, it’s the anger and the joy.
Marriage isn’t a beautiful thing, but it is amazing.
It’s knowing that someone loves you so much and won’t leave you even though you said something nasty.
It’s having someone have your back no matter what.
It’s fights over stupid things, like someone not doing the dishes or picking up after themselves.
And it’s those nights you fall asleep in each other’s arms, feeling like there will never be enough time with them.
It’s cleaning up their throw up, or just rubbing their back when they’re sick.
It’s the dirtiest, hardest, most rewarding job there is.
Because at the end of the day you get to crawl into bed with your best friend, the weirdest, most annoying, loving, goofy, perfect person that you know.
Marriage is not beautiful, but it’s one hell of a ride.
“GIFT FROM THE SEA.”ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH’S
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.
It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to.
And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.
We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.
We are afraid it will never return.
We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even.
Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
ABOUT LOVE BY NEIL GAIMAN
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.
ON MARRIAGE BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God [spirit]. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
I TAKE YOU MY HEART BY UNKNOWN
I take you my heart At the rising of the moon And the setting of the stars. To love and to honour Through all that may come. Through all our lives together In all our lives, May we be reborn That we may meet and know And love again, And remember.
YOU CAN GIVE WITHOUT LOVING
BY VICTOR HUGO, FROM LES MISERABLES You can give without loving but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.
We pardon to the extent that we love.
Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be truly alone again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Loved for ourselves.
And even loved in spite of ourselves.
NOTES TO MYSELF
BY HUGH PRATHER I must do these things in order to communicate:
Become aware of you (discover you).
Make you aware of me (uncover myself).
Be ready to change during our conversation and be willing to reveal my changes to you. For communication to have meaning it must have a life.
It must transcend ‘you and me’ and become 'us’.
If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it.
And you see and partake of me.
In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new.
To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter a conversation clutching myself.
I must enter it with loose boundaries.
I must give myself to the relationship and be willing to be what grows out of it.
FROM MAKTUB
BY PAULO COELHO
In this world there is always one person waiting for another, be it in the middle of a desert or in the middle of a big city. And when those people pass each other and their eyes meet, past and future lose all importance, and the only thing that exists is that moment and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun was written by the same Hand, the Hand that awakens Love, and that makes a twin soul for everyone who works, rests and seeks treasure under the sun. Without this our human dreams would make no sense.
A POEM
BY RUMI
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.