Tapestry Event Co.'s Favorite Ceremony Readings
It’s no secret that at Tapestry Event Co., the heart of your celebration is found in the ceremony. We believe that your ceremony is the opportunity to declare what is important inside the culture of your new family. While you may be drawing on traditions passed on through generations, or unique rituals you’ve create as a couple, we also want your ceremony to draw inspiration from the wider world that you will conquer together. A great way to draw inspiration into a ceremony is through a reading. We took time to compile our favorite ceremony readings to help get your wheels turning. Enjoy!
Image courtesy of TMInspired Photography.
FOR NATURE LOVERS AND STAR GAZERS
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
“It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.
Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”
— Albert Einstein, That’s Relativity
“Forests will always hold your secrets, for that’s what forests are for. To separate and hide things. To protect, to comfort, to hold, to envelop, to demonstrate, to slow down, to hold, to teach. Go to the trees to explore your questions and dreams. Go to the tree to desire and seek. The world will listen as you walk, watch, soften, and breathe.”
— Victoria Erickson
“Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”
— John Muir
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
— Carl Sagan
“Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops like the universe itself only by perpetual discovery. The only right love is that between couples whose passion leads them both, one through the other, to a higher possession of their being.
Put your faith in the spirit which dwells between the two of you. You have each offered yourself to the other as a boundless field of understanding, of enrichment, of mutually increased sensibility. You will meet above all by entering into and constantly sharing one another’s thoughts, affections, and dreams. There alone, as you know, in spirit, which is arrived through flesh, you will find no disappointments, no limits. There alone the skies are ever open for your love; there alone lies the great road ahead.”
— Pierre Tielhard de Chardin
“In nature, nothing is perfect, and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.”
— Alice Walker
Image courtesy of Kate Miller Photography.
For partners in crime
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ‘stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope."
— Maya Angelou
“To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being – what an insane thing to do. What a burden, what a gift.”
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.”
— Robert Fulghum, Mutual Weirdness
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you.”
— Neil Gaiman, Sandman
"But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take…It is indeed a fearful gamble…Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected."
— Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season
“I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives
the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I know no other way
of loving you but this, in which there is no I or you;
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.”
— Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets, XVII
“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
— When Harry Met Sally
Image courtesy of TMInspired Photography.
For the inner child
“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.”
“All of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
These are the things I learned… Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Give them to someone who feels sad. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day. Take a nap every afternoon. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.'"
— Robert Fulghum, All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Rain has drops
Sun has shine
Moon has beams
That makes you mine
Rivers have banks
Sands for shores
Hearts have heartbeats
That make me yours
Needles have eyes
Though pins may prick
Elmer has glue
To make things stick
Winter has Spring
Stockings feet
Pepper has mint
To make it sweet
Teachers have lessons
Soup du jour
Lawyers sue bad folks
Doctors cure
All and all
This much is true
You have me
And I have you”
— Nikki Giovanni, "And I Have You”
“‘I am,’ he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. ‘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.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“True love is the greatest thing in the world — except for a nice MLT mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.”
— The Princess Bride
Photo courtesy of Karen Kirsch Creative.
For the deeply spiritual or religious
“Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
“The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul
the way light rushes into a transparent object.
The more love we receive, the more love we shine forth;
so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of loving is.
And the more souls who resonate together,
the greater the intensity of their love,
for, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.”
— Dante Alighieri, The Love of God
“Do not deceive, do not despise each other anywhere. Do not be angry nor bear secret resentments; for as a mother will risk her life and watches over her child, so boundless be your love to all, so tender, kind and mild.
Cherish goodwill right and left, early and late, and without hindrance, without stint, be free of hate and envy, while standing and walking and sitting down, whatever you have in mind, the rule of life that is always best is to be loving-kind.”
— Buddhist Blessing
“Hark! my lover here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.
My lover speaks; he says to me,
’Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one,
and come!
‘O my dove in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you,
let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet,
and you are lovely.’
My lover belongs to me and I to him.
He says to me:
’Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether-world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.”
— Song of Songs 2:8-10,14,16a; 8:6-7a
Photo courtesy of Beginning and End Photography.
For a hand fasting ceremony
“Love each other from this day forward, and these will be the hands that you hold tomorrow, and the next day, and into the next decade. These are the hands that will work alongside yours as you build your life together, the hands that will touch you with love and tenderness through the years, and the hands that will comfort you like no others’ can. These are the hands that will hold you through grief, fear, and hardship. These are the hands that will wipe tears of joy and sorrow from your eyes, and the hands that will tenderly hold your children. These are the hands that will hold your family together, and that will give you strength when you need it. These are the hands, that when wrinkled and spotted with age, will still be reaching for yours.”
— Unknown
— Kate, Tapestry Creative Director + Kelleen, Tapestry Content Manager