Weeping with Joy

Rather than boring your wedding guests with clichéd speeches and readings that they have heard many times before, you can turn up the romance by taking your reading inspiration from the world of movies and literature.

If you are pulling out all the romantic stops for your beach wedding in Thailand, you'll need a couple of special readings to match the spirit of the day. After all, you don’t want to drag the atmosphere down by rattling out a speech that all your guests have heard in a cold, bare chapel back home.

If you are in need of some inspiration, below is a selection of romantic speeches from classic books and movies. If you or your partner read one of these extracts during the ceremony, there won't be be a dry eye in the house when you’re done.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

If you haven’t read Jane Eyre, then you haven’t experienced the timeless love story between Jane, the heroine, and the dark and mysterious Mr Rochester. Jane, a penniless orphan, arrives at Fairfax as a governess to Rochester’s young ward, Adele. However, it isn’t long before the unlikely pair fall in love. If you want to mirror Jane’s fiery romance in your wedding reading, try this outpouring of love...

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love - I have found you. You are my sympathy - my better self - my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you - and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare

If you love the thrills of traditional, old school romance, then a sonnet by Shakespeare is the perfect choice for your wedding reading. Indeed, Shakespearean sonnets were often intended as verses of love and Sonnet 116 is one of the Bard’s most romantic, although it might take a few practices to ensure you get the hang of the rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter...

“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:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed 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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin tells the story of the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Kefalonia during World War II. Dr Iannis and his young daughter Pelagia (played by Penelope Cruz in the movie) are forced to play host to the Italian captain, Antonio Corelli (Nicolas Cage). Despite the political turmoil surrounding them, Antonio and Pelagia eventually fall in love, and these are Dr Iannis’s words on the subject…

“Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those who truly love have roots that grow toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find they are one tree and not two.”

The Wedding Singer

For grooms that fancy themselves as a singer, why not serenade the bride with a romantic melody rather than trying to charm her with a simple reading? Despite being cheesy, the sentiment behind the modern love story featured in The Wedding Singer, gets marriage and love just right. If you need to remember how the tune goes, click the link for a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1A_X8VMIqU

“I wanna make you smile whenever you're sad.
Carry you around when your arthritis is bad.
All I wanna do, Is grow old with you.

I'll get you medicine, when your tummy aches.
Build you a fire if the furnace breaks.
Oh it could be so nice, growin' old with you.

I'll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold.
Need you, feed you.

Even let you hold the remote control.
So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink.
Put you to bed when you've had too much to drink.
Oh I could be the man, who grows old with you.”

The Notebook

Now perhaps for the biggest tearjerker of them all – The Notebook. Written by Nicholas Sparks, this novel is set in 1940s America and tells the story of Allie and Noah – two young lovers separated by family, education and class. If you haven’t yet read the novel or seen the movie, make sure you do. This speech is one that beautifully reflects the essence of working on a relationship as you grow old together.

 

“It isn’t easy to explain. IT has not been the rip-roaring spectacular I fancied it would be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. I suppose it has most resembled a blue-chop stock: fairly stable, more ups than downs, and gradually tending over time. A good buy, a lucky buy, and I’ve learned that not everyone can say this about his life. But do not be misled. I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

 

 

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