I am extremely thrilled that one of my dear friends has asked me to do a reading at her upcoming wedding ceremony. This bride is very flexible and is basically giving me free rein to read whatever I want, within reason.
Here's the challenge: one of the reasons I love this couple is because they are polyamourous and extremely nerdy (particularly with Harry Potter, Spiderman and Star Wars). So many of the wedding readings I come across say things like “You are the only one for me,” and “I will never love anyone the way I love you,” when the truth is those things don't apply to this couple. They will continue loving other people and my reading needs to be respectful of that.
I need help finding a poly-friendly wedding reading that shows that this couple loves each other but that also shows respect to their extra-marital partners, who will all be in attendance at the wedding ceremony. –Deesse Du Soleil
Great question! That's why we asked super-officiant and Offbeat Bride vendor Jessie Blum to give some advice. She's helped you with Wedding Ceremony 101 and have your friend officiate, so we knew she'd have some perfect suggestions for poly-friendly wedding readings. Here's what she had to say…
When choosing a reading for a situation like this, the best way to go about it is to look at the context of the readings. Choose passages that concentrate on the love or relationship that the couple shares, but isn't exclusionary. Passages that reflect more on the ideals of love than the ideals of partnership. Many wedding readings are directed towards two people, or are about the joining of two people's lives, but there are a lot that are much more about just having a whole lot of love in your lives and letting that love grow — that, to me, seems to be the best way to approach a reading appropriate for a polyamourous couple.
You could also ask your friends for their favorite authors or books, to see what they say about love (there has to be something good in Harry Potter about it, though I can't think of anything off the top of my head!).
Bob Ross quotes to add some happy little zen to your ceremony
Some of my earliest memories came from my ASMR-filled hours blissing out to Bob Ross' Joy of Painting. It comes as no surprise to me... Read more
Also, don't be afraid to edit readings slightly, to fit the context. If there is a reading that feels perfect, but concentrates a little bit too much on being faithful to only your partner, or is exclusionary, just take those lines out.
I think the most important thing to remember is that every couple is different — every relationship that every person has is different. Finding the readings that work the best, that speak to the relationship, can be a very daunting task, especially with a few parameters stuck in there, too. But it is worth the research, the time, and the effort to find that one reading that just says, “Hey! I need to be read in this wedding!”
Some poly-friendly suggestions:
Rumi would work well. Really sensual, lovely, lyrical — and much more about loving and finding another person who you connect with, without saying, “Hey, you! You can't ever have a relationship with another person!” There's so much Rumi to choose from, too!
From Gift from the Sea by Annie Morrow Lindbergh
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
From Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road
I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
But offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid-up stores,
However convenient the dwellings,
You shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port,
And however calm the waters,
You shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you
You are permitted to receive it but a little while
Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before you,
The long brown path before you,
leading wherever you choose.
Say only to one another:
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
To Love is Not to Possess by James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
From Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love.
Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.
From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
You could also look into some other “classic” non-traditional readings that have already been featured on Offbeat Bride, such as a selection from the Velveteen Rabbit and Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog.
Now we'll open this one to y'all: any suggestions for readings that respect polyamorous relationships?
Every time I read a post like this, I’m proud to have had even a tiny hand in Offbeat Bride.
This is lovely and useful, thank you!
I hope with all the focus on whether or not marriage is “one man/one woman”, at some point, we might as a culture turn our attention next to the “one” part of that question, and realize that families come in all sizes as well as all sexes.
This is such great timing because Offbeatbride JUST featured a wedding that used a reading perfect for your situation: “Scientific Romance” by Tim Pratt http://tim-pratt.livejournal.com/106839.html
It hits every nerdy point, and is in no way exclusionary. My fiance and I are using this reading in our own ceremony next week! It’s lighthearted, and beautiful, but it’s not about possession or two becoming one. It’s just a sweet poem this guy wrote for his wife that says “hey you are super cool and no matter what crazy sci-fi way the world ends I want to experience it with you”
And this is why I love Offbeat Bride. Such a wonderful post and such profound readings. Thanks, Offbeat Bride and community!
I’m a big fan of this poem/prayer from Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing:
My love, you are a river fed by many streams.
I bless all who have shaped you,
The lovers whose delights still dance patterns on your back,
Those who carved your channels deeper, broader, wider,
Whitewater and backwater lovers,
Swamp lovers, sun-warmed estuary lovers,
Lovers with surface tension,
Lovers like boulders,
Like ice forming and breaking,
Lovers that fill and spill with the tides.
I bless those who have taught you
and those who have pleased you
and those who have hurt you.
All those who have made you who you are.
This might be a moot point to a lot of people, and don’t feel bad because I have seen it attributed as such ALL over the internet (and even in books), but as far as I have been able to determine, only the last three sentences of the “Les Miserables” reading above are actually from the novel by Victor Hugo. The first sentence (You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving) is more commonly attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson. The second (The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness) may be a remix of Mother Teresa’s quote “We can do no great things, only small things with great love,” and the third (We pardon to the extent that we love) seems to be a Francois de La Rochefoucauld quote. (I have no idea who wrote or said, “Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again.”)
Please don’t let that stop you from using the reading at your wedding though! I am posting this more in the hopes of helping someone like myself — I’m looking for a wedding reading in French and was searching through the entire novel looking for the excerpt above!
Les Miserables (and Victor Hugo) DOES have a lot of other really lovely stuff to say about love though — including one of my favourites, “Love is a child six thousand years old.”
Thanks for letting me know! I’ll make a note of this, and see if I can make a better attribution.
I run a poly forum on alternative network site, and I found this thru Google. I love this.
this is lovely. my girlfriend and i are both married to men, and i really would like some way of marking or celebrating our own committment to each other. this is a wonderful page! thank you!!
Thank you for this! I’ve been legally married to one of my partners for over 10 years, and my other partner and I are just starting to seriously talk about having a ceremony in about a year. Offbeat Bride was the first place I thought to start browsing for ideas, and I was very happy to see this recent post. Thanks for being so inclusive! I’ll be happy to share our celebration when it happens.
To Love is Not to Possess by James Kavanaugh would have to be my favourite in this list.. I like the idea of maybe having a friend of ours read something during the ceremony that ties it all together.. hmm
The Love of God, by Dante
The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul the way that light
rushes into a transparent object.
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
itself; so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.
And the more souls who resonate together,
the greater the intensity of their love,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
I am in a polyamorous relationship with 2 of the most wonderful angels and we are wanting to get married. We live in San Diego, CA., where can we go to have a simple, discreet wedding?
By definition, if they’re poly, they’re not a couple.
Lol that’s not even remotely accurate.
From Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet”:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
I’m also a fan of “The Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann as poetry about building a life true to yourself. 🙂
I married my partner last summer, and it was important to us to have a reading that left space for loving others. This is what we chose:
from The Passion by Jeanette Winterson:
How do you fall in love?
You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.
p.s. You have to be brave
My husband and I are poly and in a triad. When husband and I got married this summer, we wanted a way to recognize her in the ceremony while not outing anyone involved. As both our families are rather Christian, we used the Ecclesiastes verse about two are better than one but a cord of three strands is not easily broken. The reader continued with a sentence that “we as the community are here to be the third strand and uphold this couple in their marriage.” People who knew we were poly got the reference, while the guests thought it was an awesome reading.