Ceremony readings - need suggestions

Hi girls! We're finalizing our ceremony and we've left out readings. Our ceremony is civil - no religion involved - so I need help choosing readings. Does anyone have suggestions for nice readings for a non-religious ceremony?

Also, we haven't settled on or even asked anyone to be a reader yet. Do you think it'd be OK to skip over readings altogether?

TIA!

Re: Ceremony readings - need suggestions

You can skip the readings all together, but don't do that just because you haven't asked soemone yet. Here is one non-bible reading:

Irish Wedding Blessing:
May your mornings bring joy and your evenings bring peace.
May your troubles grow few as your blessings increase.
May the saddest day of your future
Be no worse than the happiest day of your past.
May your hands be forever clasped in friendship
And your hearts joined forever in love.
Your lives are very special,
God has touched you in many ways.
May his blessings rest upon you
And fill all your coming days.

Re: Ceremony readings - need suggestions

I love this poem but since I am having a mass I have to use readings from the bible...

Why Marriage?
Mari Nichols-Haining

Because to the depths of me, I long to love one person,
With all my heart, my soul, my mind, my body...

Because I need a forever friend to trust with the intimacies of me,
Who won't hold them against me,
Who loves me when I'm unlikable,
Who sees the small child in me, and
Who looks for the divine potential of me...

Because I need to cuddle in the warmth of the night
With someone who thanks God for me,
With someone I feel blessed to hold...

Because marriage means opportunity
To grow in love in friendship...

Because marriage is a discipline
To be added to a list of achievements...

Because marriages do not fail, people fail
When they enter into marriage
Expecting another to make them whole...

Because, knowing this,
I promise myself to take full responsibility
For my spiritual, mental and physical wholeness
I create me,
I take half of the responsibility for my marriage
Together we create our marriage...

Because with this understanding
The possibilities are limitless.

Re: Ceremony readings - need suggestions

I love the poem 'i carry your heart with me' by E E Cummings. (it's recited at the end of In Her Shoes). I'm maybe thinking of using it for one of my readings.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)