Wedding Readings for Your Best Friend’s Wedding – “Wedding Poem”

Welcome back to our Sunday segment, Wedding Readings Ideas. Here we source and share some of our favourite texts perfect for weddings. This week we are focusing on wedding readings for your best friend’s wedding. We try and include a variety of ideas so that there is a reading suggestion for every kind of speech at every kind of wedding!

However, if you are looking for a reading suggestion for a specific event, please feel free to leave us a comment. We would love to help you source one.

The Reading

This week’s reading is Wedding Poem by Ross Gay.

Friends I am here to modestly report

seeing in an orchard

in my town

a goldfinch kissing

a sunflower

again and again

dangling upside down

by its tiny claws

steadying itself by snapping open

like an old-timey fan

its wings

again and again,

until, swooning, it tumbled off

and swooped back to the very same perch,

where the sunflower curled its giant

swirling of seeds

around the bird and leaned back

to admire the soft wind

nudging the bird’s plumage,

and friends I could see

the points on the flower’s stately crown

soften and curl inward

as it almost indiscernibly lifted

the food of its body

to the bird’s nuzzling mouth

whose fervor

I could hear from

oh 20 or 30 feet away

and see from the tiny hulls

that sailed from their

good racket,

which good racket, I have to say

was making me blush,

and rock up on my tippy-toes,

and just barely purse my lips

with what I realize now

was being, simply, glad,

which such love,

if we let it,

makes us feel.

Why We love It

This is one of our favourite wedding readings for your best friend’s wedding, because it illustrates the simple joy of witnessing somebody in love. We love how the poet links the simple beauty of nature to the grander beauty of a wedding. The poem correlates the intricate relationship between a bird and the sunflower from which it feeds to the joyful relationship between his friends. As a reader we are left with the image of delight and gladness gained from being witness to love in its purest form.

If you like this reading, keep your eyes peeled next Sunday and every Sunday from here on out. We will share more wedding readings for your best friend’s wedding, your parent’s weddings, vow renewals, and more.

By Wedding Rings Direct