Your Day in Northamptonshire Northants 2017 | Page 38

Readings
A Walled Garden k
Unknown
You can personalise your ceremony
with a piece of verse or prose, a
selection of which is below. This could
be read by you or one of your guests.
You can choose your own readings,
something more meaningful to you
and your ceremony, please note they
cannot have any religious content.
You can include your reading
choices when you submit the online
ceremony planning form in advance
of the ceremony.
Where there is love kt
‘Your marriage’, he said, ‘should have within it, a secret and
protected place, open to you alone. Where there is love the heart is light,
Imagine it to be a walled garden, entered by a door to which
you only hold the key. Where there is love there is a song,
Within this garden you will cease to be a mother, father,
employee, homemaker or any other of the roles which you
fulfil in daily life. Where there is love there is a smile
Here you are yourselves, two people who love each other.
Here you can concentrate on one another’s needs’. So take
my hand and let us go back to our garden. The time we
spend together is not wasted but invested.
Helen Steiner Rice
Where there is love the day is bright,
To help when things are going wrong
To make all things seem more worthwhile,
Where there is love there’s quiet peace,
A tranquil place where turmoil’s cease-
Love changes darkness into light
And makes the heart take “wingless flight”.
Invested in our future and the nurture of our love.
Extract from Les Miserables kt Victor Hugo
You can give without loving, but you can never love without
giving.
A Marriage k
Mark Twain
A marriage… The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually
performing small acts of kindness.
Makes of two fractional lives a whole; We pardon to the extent that we love.
it gives to two purposeless lives a work, and doubles the
strength of each to perform it; Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will
never be lonely again.
it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, and
something to live for; And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance
to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery
to life. And even loved in spite of ourselves.
I promise kt
Dorothy R Colgan
I promise to give you the best of myself and to ask of you no
more than you can give.
I promise to respect you as your own person and to realise
that your interests, desires and needs are no less important
than my own.
Look to this day kt
Unknown
Look to this day for it is life the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence;
the joy of growth, the splendour of action, the glory of power.
For yesterday is but a memory.
And tomorrow is only a vision.
I promise to share with you my time and my attention and
to bring joy, strength and imagination to our relationship. But today well lived makes every yesterday a memory of
happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you see through
the window of my world into my innermost fears and
feelings, secrets and dreams. Look well, therefore, to this day.
I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face
changes in order to keep our relationship alive and exciting.
I promise to love you in good times and in bad with all I have
to give and all I feel inside in the only way I know how.
Completely and forever.
36
Loved for ourselves.