Wedding Ceremony Help!?

Question

So I'm getting married soon and all my decisions that are left are just the details part, like songs and such. So I'm wondering if any brides out there (past or present) or just anyone who’s been to a wedding that wants to help, can help me decide on some things:

1) I need help with picking a Bible verse out for the wedding. I'm looking for something different that hasn’t been read at every other wedding ever preformed like, “Love is patient, Love is kind”, you know the ones I’m talking about, they’ve been read in most all wedding and in most all movies.

2) I'm also thinking of maybe having someone read a poem, that’s if I don't pick two Bible verses. What are poems you think are wedding appropriate that are just really beautiful and are all about love and stuff? Something like, "I Carry Your Heart" by E.E. Cummings.

3) What songs would be good to be sung during the wedding ceremony, my sister and cousin are going to sing a duet and I want some good ideas for songs.

Answer 1

I don’t have bible verses handy but here are a few reading ideas:
Carl Sandburg
I love you. I love you for what you are,
but I love you yet more for what you are going to be.
I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals.
I pray for your desires, that they may be great,
rather than for your satisfactions,
which may be so hazardously little.
A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall.
But the most beautiful rose is one,
hardly more than a bud,
wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for larger and finer growth.
Not always shall you be what you are now.
You are going forward toward something great.
I am on the way with you and . . I love you.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments. Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds,
or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! It is an ever-fix'd mark.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
it is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
within his bending sickle's compass come;
love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.


Fidelity by D.H. Lawrence
Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers
in summer, and love, but underneath is rock.
Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than foraminiferae,
older than plasm altogether is the soul underneath.
And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love
slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks
of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,
a man's heart and a woman's,
that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,
the sapphire of fidelity.
The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.



Touch the Air Softly by William Jay Smith
Now touch the air softly, step gently, one, two ...
I'll love you 'til roses are robin's egg blue;
I'll love you 'til gravel is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange, and lavender's red.

Now touch the air softly, swing gently the broom.
I'll love you 'til windows are all of a room;
And the table is laid, And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes on bottomless air.

I'll love you 'til heaven rips the stars from his coat,
And the moon rows away in a glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down like a river below,
And earth is ablaze, and oceans aglow.

So touch the air softly, and swing the broom high.
We will dust the grey mountains, and sweep the blue sky:
And I'll love you as long as the furrow the plough,
As however is ever, and ever is now.


How do I love thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being an Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old grief's, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Love's Philosophy by Percy Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle:-
Why not I with thine?
See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
Now sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee

Answer 2

1. Look through the Song of Solomon, some of the passages are quite beautiful. Or from Ruth - the part of 'wherever you go, I will go" - there's a song based on that, too, which is quite beautiful...
2. The cummings poem is beautiful. Here is a link with some other beautiful passages -
http://www.geocities.com/weddingwordsmith/marriagereadings.html
3. A song I recently sang with another woman, at my sister's wedding was "Devoted to You" by the Everly Brothers. Beautiful words and easy, pretty melody. Another option - "Annie's Song" by John Denver. Yes, retro, but pretty...

Answer 3

Jeremiah 29:11 I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good and not for evil to give you a future and a hope!

Answer 4

For 1 and 2
http://www.todays-weddings.com/planning/readings.html

For 3
Panis Angelicus
Ave Maria

Answer 5

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that [is] thy portion in [this] life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 9:9

Poem:

Every Second Beat

If I had a thousand pages,
I could never name them all,
The reasons that I love you,
For the list would be too tall.

I love you for the melody,
I hear within your voice.
The way your blue eyes hold me,
A captive, but by choice.

I love you for your gentle hands,
That melt away my pain.
I love you for your loving heart,
That made mine beat again.

I love you for your loving smile,
With which my old heart soars.
These are some of the reasons,
Every second beat is yours.

- Mark Liverance


song:

"I Believe" Elton John

Answer 6

u could get a big cake and put it and the center of the building. u could get a brick warterfountain but it is decoration nobody can not drink out it . and u can get tables with table cloths on them.