Love and Children’s Books: Wedding Readings

Our wedding is five days away (four by the time this blog publishes) so clearly, love and marriage is high on my mind. Although our wedding does not use any of these, I can’t help but reflect on my favorite wedding readings about love from children’s literature.

• It seems right to start with one of the most beloved characters, Winnie the Pooh and the example of true friendship from A.A. Milne.

“’If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.’

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ‘Pooh?’ he whispered. ‘Yes, Piglet?’

‘Nothing,’ said Piglet, taking Pooh’s hand. ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.’

‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.

‘Even longer,’ Pooh answered. ‘If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together…there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.'”

• Now there’s a story that I was not even a fan of as a child, but the passage truly hits “reality” in The “Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams

“’What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. ‘Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?’

‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’

‘I suppose you are real?’ said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse only smiled.

‘Someone made me Real,’ he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’

• From a book that was required reading in the eighth grade and I never appreciated it until rereading this passage: “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

‘She is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.’

Now these are some of the most popular and classic ones, but are there any awesome obscure ones out there? Or books that you wouldn’t think of love books that really have an amazing passage? Let me know in the comments!