Readings....Ocean Themed Wedding!

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

my love as deep: the more I give to thee,

the more I have, for both are infinite.”

William Shakespeare

George P. Morris

“Thou art the star that guides me

Along life’s changing sea;

And whatever fate betides me,

This heart still turns to thee.”

Mary Ashley Townsend

“How much do I love thee?

Go ask the deep sea

How many rare gems

In its coral caves be;

Or ask the broad billows,

That ceaselessly roar,

How many bright sands

Do they kiss on the shore?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have gathered here to bless _______ and _______ with our best wishes. Please take a blessing shell as we all follow the new Mr. & Mrs. down to the water’s edge. You must first place your wish for them upon the shell and wait for the couple to count to three. Then we will all cast our shells into the water at the same time, as we bless their future together.”

Found a couple...see if any are of interest to you!

Beach wedding readings

Edmund Spenser

SONNET 75

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay

A mortal thing so to immortalize!

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eek my name be wiped out likewise.

Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name;

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Sara Teasdale

ENOUGH

It is enough for me by day

To walk the same bright earth with him

Enough that over us by night

The same great roof of stars is dim

I do not hope to bind the wind

Or set a fetter on the sea

It is enough to feel his love

Blow by like music over me

PEACE

PEACE flows into me

AS the tide to the pool by the shore;

It is mine forevermore,

It ebbs not back like the sea.

I am the pool of blue

That worships the vivid sky;

My hopes were heaven-high,

They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold

When sunset burns and dies,–

You are my deepening skies,

Give me your stars to hold.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

From A Gift From the Sea

“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. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow and 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 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 it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread and anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, 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. One must accept the security of the winged life, of the ebb and flow, of intermittency.”

How about "Gift From The Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh? or "Come Live With Me and Be My Love" by Christopher Sousa? or "Beach Chairs" by Joyce Ebrecht?

You ladies Rock! Thank you!