9 Wedding Readings About Laughter

When it comes to getting married, make sure to include plenty of wedding readings that your family will love. Why? Well, weddings are a time for all the mushy, gushy, lovey-dovey stuff. But they’re also a time when you, perhaps unwisely, invite all of your family members to gather into one tiny little space... with an open bar. If your family is anything like mine, you’re probably going to be crossing your fingers behind your fancy wear hoping that Uncle Dave doesn’t get gin-happy and decide to venture over to your favorite aunt (and his favorite ex-wife).

It’s you and your boo’s day, and everything should be perfect. But even if things get a little hairy (or downright scary), the power to make it a perfect day is still in your hands. A little laughter goes a long way to help you shake off whatever wedding-day drama, downers, or debauchery.

These readings about the boons of laughter from some of your favorite books will remind you to keep the smiles going on your special day and into your new life with your boo. Because laughter is as important as love when you’re planning on spending the rest of your life with another human as flawed, ridiculous, and adorable as yourself.

1. “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”

― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

2. “A house from which nobody ever went away without feeling better in some way. A house in which there was always laughter.”

— L.M. Montgomery, Mistress Pat

3. “Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.”

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

4. "A man's gaiety is what most betrays the whole man from head to foot. Sometimes one will be for a long time unable to read a character, but if the man begins to laugh his whole character will suddenly lie open before you. It is only the loftiest and happiest natureswhose gaiety is infectious, that is, good-hearted and irresistible. I am not talking of intellectual development, but of character, ofthe whole man. And so if you want to see into a man and to understand his soul, don't concentrate your attention on the way hetalks or is silent, on his tears, or the emotion he displays over exalted ideas; you will see through him better when he laughs. Ifa man has a good laugh, it means that he is a good man."

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Raw Youth or The Adolescent

5. “Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.”

― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

6. “He thought about the next time he would laugh with her and then the next. He found himself often thinking about the future, even before the present was over.”

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

7. “I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.”

― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

8. “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”

― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

9. Take bread away from me, if you wish,

take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter.Do not take away the rose,the lance flower that you pluck,the water that suddenlybursts forth in joy,the sudden waveof silver born in you.My struggle is harsh and I come backwith eyes tiredat times from having seenthe unchanging earth,but when your laughter entersit rises to the sky seeking meand it opens for me allthe doors of life.My love, in the darkesthour your laughteropens, and if suddenlyyou see my blood stainingthe stones of the street,laugh, because your laughterwill be for my handslike a fresh sword.Next to the sea in the autumn,your laughter must raiseits foamy cascade,and in the spring, love,I want your laughter likethe flower I was waiting for,the blue flower, the roseof my echoing country.Laugh at the night,at the day, at the moon,laugh at the twistedstreets of the island,laugh at this clumsyboy who loves you,but when I openmy eyes and close them,when my steps go,when my steps return,deny me bread, air,light, spring,but never your laughterfor I would die.

― Pablo Neruda, “Your Laughter”

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