| Several people have asked if they
can have copies of the two readings that were given in the ceremony, so
here they are. |
|
The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery
Williams, read by Louise
‘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 someone 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 your 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 he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But 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’. |
|
Love
is a friendship that has caught fire, read by Irene
I
knew
that I had been touched by love when I first saw you, and I felt
your
warmth, and I heard your laughter; when I stopped thinking in terms of
‘me’ and
started thinking in terms of ‘we’; when we started dreaming dreams
together; when
I realised that I preferred not to make decisions by myself any more
and had
the strong desire to share everything with you. Marriage
should
have within it a secret and protected place, open to us alone.
Imagine
it to be a walled garden, entered by a door to which only we have the
key.
Within this garden we cease to be a mother, father, employee, homemaker
or any
other role that we fulfil in daily life. Here we are ourselves; two
people who
love each other. Here we can concentrate on one another’s needs. The
time we
spend there is not wasted but invested; invested in our future and the
nurture
of our love. |