what we talk about when we talk about love

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can someone point me in the direction of a poem or short essay or brief quotation that would be good to read at a wedding? I did it last year, and now i've been asked to do it again ( wedding ) and now I need another one...

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 24 February 2004 19:57 (twenty-one years ago)

ah yes, thats a toughie - i fretted but ended up reading the Shakespeare sonnet (116) the groom's mother reccommended. Easy, lovely, Good.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 24 February 2004 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Love in the open hand,
no thing but that. Unhidden,
wishing not to hurt,
as one would bring you cowslips in a hat
swung from the hand,
or apples in her skirt,
I bring you,
calling out as children do:
Look what I have! And these
are all for you!

Or something like that. Look it up in one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets.

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 00:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Or better yet, from Terry Yempest Williams LEAP: Yes, we are here to love, Yes, we are here to experience the body, in both shadow and light, in forgiveness and joy, we return to each other, rejoined. Together we will love this beautiful, broken world of which we are a part. (page 261)

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 00:58 (twenty-one years ago)

No! No Edna St. Vincent Millay! Are you insane? Her sonnets are cynical and proto-bad-'70s-feminist weirdness. Try kooky renaissance stuff if you want classy romanticism, or even late-Victorian schmaltiness, but avoid Edna like the plague.

― The Second Drummer Drowned (Atila the Honeybun), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 02:01 (twenty-one years ago)

John Donne is good for a "hotcha-let's-get-it-on" poetry... Not all of it, mind you, but some of it does contain passion and desire. I'm with second drummer on the Edna too...

― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

In the prose department, you could flip through "On Love" by Alain de Botton. Mostly frill-less, some of it really good, and it's short enough that you can find some good stuff quickly.

― Jessa (Jessa), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I can tell you what NOT to read at a wedding, although truer thoughts on love I have never read:

Vows

Nay, ask me not. I would not dare pretend
To constant passion and a life-long trust.
They will desert thee, if indeed they must.
How can we guess what Destiny will send--
Smiles of fair fortune, or black storms to rend
What even now is shaken by a gust?
The fire will burn, or it will die in dust.
We cannot tell until the final end.

And never vow was forged that could confine
Aught but the body of the thing whereon
Its pledge was stamped. The inner soul divine,
That thinks of going, is already gone.
When faith and love need bolts upon the door,
Faith is not faith, and love abides no more.

-Ada Cambridge

― el kabong, Wednesday, 25 February 2004 23:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I went to a wedding once where they wheeled a grand piano in and the best man played November Rain by Guns'n'Roses. We merely shuffled our feet and looked at the floor silently pleading for it to end.

Not recommended. And not literature either!

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 26 February 2004 09:45 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

Since we love each other
I shall be great
And you rich.
---Victor Hugo
I'm sure the wedding is probably history, but I'd be interested to know what you read. (?)

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Monday, 22 March 2004 22:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I would highly suggest avoiding any of this material:

http://www.rowanatkinson.org/wedding.htm

― Michael White (Hereward), Monday, 22 March 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Reads in prev post

>> I would highly suggest avoiding any of this material:

and, being a curious PuzzleMonkey immediately skitters over. *Nearly pisses self laughing*

Au contraire, Mr White, this should be required reading for everyone involved in a wedding (and haven't we all, one way or another?).

― PuzzleMonkey (PuzzleMonkey), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Alright, Fritz, 'fess up -- what did you finally choose to go with?

― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Saturday, 27 March 2004 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

two weeks pass...

Fritz? FRIIIIITZ!

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 15 April 2004 19:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Wine comes in at the mouth,
and love comes in at the eye,
that's all we shall know of truth
before we grow old and die.
I raise a glass to my lips,
I look at you and I sigh.

― aimurchie (aimurchie), Friday, 16 April 2004 03:06 (twenty-one years ago)

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