Filling your day with personal touches is one of the joys of planning your own wedding. Choosing your own wedding readings for your ceremony is the perfect opportunity to show off your couple style. However, finding a reading that really speaks to you both and works for the occasion can be tricky. You don’t want anything too long – you want to be able to hold your guests’ attention – but still need the reading to feel personal and meaningful. When choosing readings for a destination wedding think about your surroundings. Poems, song lyrics or book excerpts with references to the ocean are a fantastic way of celebrating the natural beauty around you. Getting married in Santorini is a dream come true for many couples, and there’s no better wedding venue on this stunning Greek island than Le Ciel. We’ve had the honour of hosting hundreds of destination weddings here and love hearing the unique readings – both modern and classic – our couples choose for their ceremonies. If you’re stuck for inspiration, here’s some of our favourite readings for a destination wedding.
Excerpt from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bèrnieres
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 root was 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 promises 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 that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
- This popular novel is set on the Greek island of Kefalonia, so makes the perfect ceremony reading for a destination wedding in Greece.
May The Sun Bring You New Energy By Day
May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night.
May the rain wash away your worries
And the breeze blow new strength into your being.
And all the days of your life may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty.
Now you can feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other.
Now there will be no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you.
Now go to your dwelling to enter into the days of your life together,
And may your days be good and long upon this earth.
Excerpt from Gift From The Sea by Anne 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.
Untitled by R.M. Drake
You will be the clouds
and I will be the sky.
You will be the ocean
and I will be the shore.
You will be the trees
and I will be the wind.
Whatever we are, you and I
will always collide.
Excerpt from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
When he looked into her eyes, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke — the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. Because when you know the language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.
Excerpt from The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again… I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment.
And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… we’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… and when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight…
Finding the perfect venue for your destination wedding in Santorini
With its breath-taking clifftop location, with dazzling views out across the Aegean Sea and rugged coastline, Le Ciel is the number one wedding venue in Santorini. It’s a stylish choice for a luxurious, exclusive-use celebration, with modern styling, incredible scenery, and world-class food. If you’d like to find out more about Le Ciel we’d love to hear from you. Click here to get in touch and we’ll get straight back to you.