Wedding readings for travel-loving couples
Travel is so important to so many couples and often this is something you may want to reflect in your wedding ceremony. There are lots of ways to incorporate things that are important to you both in your humanist wedding, one way is through readings.
Perhaps it’s not holidays or day trips you want to reflect on, but more of the metaphorical journey travelled, perhaps you want to acknowledge and celebrate how far you’ve come together. Whatever your personal connection, here are five of my favourite readings reflecting travel, transport or journeys.
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Wild Awake by Hilary T Smith
People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.
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The Confirmation by Edwin Muir
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world seem bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be
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If the words spoken at your wedding matter to you, Have you considered a personalised wedding ceremony written uniquely for you?
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A Journey by Nikki Giovanni
It’s a journey that I propose
I am not the guide nor technical assistant
I will be your fellow passenger
Though the rail has been ridden
winter clouds cover autumn’s exuberant quilt
we must provide our own guide-posts
I have heard from previous visitors
the road washes out sometimes
and passengers are compelled
to continue groping or turn back
I am not afraid
I am not afraid of rough spots
or lonely times
I don’t fear the success of this endeavour
I am Ra
in a space not to be discovered
but invented
I promise you nothing
I accept your promise
of the same we are simply riding a wave
that may carry or crash
It’s a journey and I want to go
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Nuptials by John Agard
River, be their teacher,
that together they may turn
their future highs and lows
into one hopeful flow
Two opposite shores
feeding from a single source.
Mountain, be their milestone,
that hand in hand they rise above
familiarity's worn tracks
into horizons of their own
Two separate footpaths
dreaming of a common peak.
Birdsong, be their mantra,
that down the frail aisles of their days,
their twilight hearts twitter morning
and their dreams prove branch enough.
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The Wedding Whistle by Ogden Nash
Though you know it anyhow
Listen to me, darling, now,
Proving what I need not prove
How I know I love you, love.
Near and far, near and far,
I am happy where you are;
Likewise I have never l(e)arnt
How to be it where you aren’t.
Far and wide, far and wide,
I can walk with you beside;
Furthermore, I tell you what,
I sit and sulk where you are not.
Visitors remark my frown
Where you’re upstairs and I am down,
Yes, and I’m afraid I pout
When I’m indoors and you are out;
But how contentedly I view
Any room containing you.
In fact I care not where you be,
Just as long as it’s with me.
In all your absences I glimpse
Fire and flood and trolls and imps.
Is your train a minute slothful?
I goad the stationmaster wrothful.
When with friends to bridge you drive
I never know if you’re alive,
And when you linger late in shops
I long to telephone the cops.
Yet how worth the waiting for.
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Looking for wedding readings that reflect Humanist values? Or wedding readings written by powerful women?
