Grooms in Cornwall and Devon

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Grooms - Wedding Readings

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An emotional highlight of the ceremony or a formality to pay lip service to? Our groom ponders the rights and wrongs of the readings...

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An emotional highlight of the ceremony or a formality to pay lip service to? Our groom ponders the rights and wrongs of the readings...

Nobody really listens during the readings, do they? Come on. They're like the opening slots at music festivals. A couple of die-hard fans might pay attention, but everyone else is waiting for the top three acts: The Vows, The Rings, The Kiss. They even sound like bands. You've got more important stuff on than deciding what an obscure aunt murmurs to the dozing congregation early doors. Let's just go ahead and stick a pin in the bookshelf. It's what? 'The House at Pooh Corner'? Sounds great. Here's 40p for photocopies.



The die-hard wedding fans won't catch on. They're wired to see sweetness everywhere - and like all human beings, they have a tendency to assume everyone else knows exactly what they're doing. When Pooh and Piglet visit one another at the same time? Must refer to your similar habits and mutual affection. When Pooh sings the snow song? That's the way you keep each other cheerful in the face of adversity. And the Eeyore plot represents your willingness to buy your ageing, arsey in-laws a new house.

All good. Or it would be if it was just you, your family and your friends in the room. The people in charge can be a different matter. My cousin chose the theme from 'Time The Musical', a largely forgotten West End show that spliced '80s pop rock with gooey New Age mysticism. It featured lines like, 'Reason is your greatest tool' and 'You are the creator of your own universe.' Not strictly on-message, Bible-wise. I think the vicar's words, delivered witheringly from the pulpit before he read the Charge, were, "A humanist text that was most inappropriate to a church ceremony."

Awkward. There was bristling. Tutting. A baby began to cry, though I'm not sure he'd really understood. At the reception the compliments on dresses and flowers gave way to questions about the grouchy vicar and jokes about Christian forgiveness, most of which involved the phrase "show him my other cheeks."

So yeah, the pin method does carry a slight risk of committing outrageous blasphemy in a church. But look at it this way: the risk is self-limiting. If you're utterly orthodox or irredeemably pagan there's nothing to worry about, since your bookshelf will be a perfect fit for your wedding. The more blasphemous books you own, the more likely it is you've ditched a church in favour of dancing around a 6th century earthworks with antlers on your head. It's really only the dithering cherry-pickers in the middle that can slip up.

That's me, of course. I suspect it's you too. Get your 'Pooh Corner' and meet me by the photocopier.


words Nathan Midgley


Copyright WED Magazine 2012