Venue? Check. Dress? Check. Guest list? Check. Wedding readings? Erm... If you still need to nail down who's saying what and when on your big day, these wedding readings from children's literature won't leave a dry eye in the house.
Handpicked readings are the perfect way to give your wedding a touch of your personality. You don't always have full control over your venue, and you certainly don't get to pick the weather, but your wedding readings are one way to make your ceremony truly ~yours~.
If you have a favorite book or poem, I absolutely suggest picking it up first. Your partner should do the same, ideally, but sometimes readers marry non-readers, and that's OK, too. When that's the case, perusing a list of readings together may be the best way to finalize your ceremony planning.
So grab your partner and a couple beers, and read through this list together. Whether you are down to the wire or just got engaged, these wedding readings from children's books will gel with the rest of your nuptials. Pick out a few that you like, and you've got that much less to worry about as you count down to the big day.
1. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
“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.”
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse only smiled.
"Someone made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always."
2. Your Personal Penguin by Sandra Boynton
I like you a lot.You’re funny and kind.So let me explainWhat I have in mind.
I want to be Your Personal Penguin.I want to walk right by your side.I want to be Your Personal Penguin.I want to travel with you far and wide.
3. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun — which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting though and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. The sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eye.
4. Some Things Go Together by Charlotte Zolotow
Pigeons with parkStars with dark Sand with seaand you with me.
Hats with headsPillows with bedsSky with blueand me with you.
5. Sheep and Goat by Marleen Westera
"What are you doing?" asks Goat.
"I'm looking for happiness," answers Sheep.
"Don't waste your time, Sheep. Happiness will find you."
"Help me look!" shouts Sheep.
"No, I'm much too comfortable here," says Goat.
"Then I'll look by myself. But if I find happiness, I'm going to keep it," says Sheep.
...
"Well, did you find happiness?" asks Goat.
"I thought I had. But I was wrong. I'm sorry."
"That's all right, Sheep," says Goat. "Would you like a mouthful of hay? It's a little dry today."
"It doesn't matter," says Sheep.
She takes a big bite. It is dry, and a little dusty. But it tastes like happiness.
6. The Dot and the Line by Norton Juster
"You're the beginning and the end, the hub, the core, and the quintessence," he told her tenderly, but the frivolous dot wasn't a bit interested, for she only had eyes for a wild and unkempt squiggle.
7. The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
“Pooh” whispered Piglet.“Yes, Piglet” replied Pooh.“Nothing,” answered Piglet,“I just wanted to be sure of you.”“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”“It’s so much more friendly with two.”“Pooh, promise me you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I am a hundred.”Pooh thought for a little.“How old shall I be then?”“Ninety-nine.”Pooh nodded. “I promise,” he said.“Some people care too much, I think it’s called love.”
8. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“What does that mean — 'tame'?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose — ” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
9. The Amber Spyglass 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.
10. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater... The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.
11. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
Image: Pixabay
