Crafting our ceremony: readings

I didn’t much mention our ceremony in pre-wedding posts (though of course, I shared our chapel with you here… also mentioned tidbits here and here), mostly because we wanted as much as possible to unfold as a surprise for our guests. Behind the scenes, however, our ceremony was the topic of choice in the months leading up to the big day. The ceremony was by far the most important part of the day to John and me; we wanted it to tell a story about our relationship (where we’ve come from), our present (what we value), and our future (our hopes and dreams). Arching over everything, we tried to make decisions that would celebrate the faith we have in our Lord.

We felt one of the best ways to do that was through our readings, and we’re so pleased with the ones we decided on! One was extremely easy to pick, one was fairly easy, and the last one was quite hard. I’d love to tell you about them!

The first one, the one that was easy, was an excerpt from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. MC is one of both my and John’s favorite books, and this passage in particular has always been meaningful to us. Here it is:

When I first read this passage, soon after John and I started dating, I pretty much hated it. I thought it was unromantic, and untrue. Seven years on, I find it both terribly romantic, and very true. I would love to hear your thoughts! This reading was given by Alyssa, whom we met in college and consider the first dear friend that we made together.

Our second reading I said was fairly easy to pick. We knew we wanted a reading from the Bible, and though we considered several, including Philippians 2:1-5, Philippians 4:4-8, Romans 12:9-18, and Proverbs 3:1-12, we eventually decided on Colossians 3:12-17, RSV:

I love this reading so much, and really look to it as a guide for how I should be treating John. The patience part, I am still working on :) Some of you might remember that we also used a verse from this reading (different translation) on our invitations, so including it in our ceremony was a nice way to bring things full circle. We asked our dear friend Jackie, with whom we attended both high school AND college, to give this reading. We like to think she was extra qualified, since she had just graduated with her Master of Divinity!

For our final reading, we wanted something more “literary,” since we both have always loved reading and I was an English major with a concentration in poetry. However, it was hard to agree on a reading that we both loved AND found meaningful. We considered a few poems (I love Neruda), tossed around the idea of an excerpt from a letter between John and Abigail Adams, and almost went with this one, except that John didn’t think we should choose something that he had never heard of before our wedding:

In the end, I’m glad he insisted, because the reading we ended up with couldn’t have been more perfect. We found it by going back through a box of old letters we sent to each other over the years. In one, I had included this excerpt from The Little Prince:

Once we chose this reading, we knew exactly who we would have read it at our ceremony: my high school English teacher and long time mentor, Amanda. She did a beautiful job!

Next week, we’ll talk ceremony music selections!

Tell me: Which readings did you choose for your ceremony? I LOVE hearing what people picked, so please share!