I got married last week. After years of saying I would never get married, I did. I suppose I always believed that marriage would stifle me, take away my freedoms, hinder my ability to pursue my passions.

However, over the last six years my partner has done the opposite: he builds platforms, creates more opportunities, supports all the things I care about. He gives me freedom and strength and courage and love. And because of this, I know I am lucky to call him my husband. Even though that still feels strange to say.

Our wedding was glorious – full of laughter and wild colours. Although we enjoyed so much about creating and celebrating the day together, our favourite part was undoubtedly writing our ceremony and picking poems to read. We’re both writers and words are important to us.

It took months to find the right poems, which spoke to our experiences and to each other, but in finding those we also found some others. Soon, I will write a longer post about the wedding, our chosen pieces and contemporary love poetry in general. But until then I’d like to share this shortlist of vetoed wedding poems.

Although we didn’t choose them for our day – because they were too long or too strange or not quite enough – I still adore them.  Without being overly sentimental or sappy, they touched something in us. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.

1. I Love Your Crazy Bones by Barton Sutter
2. To You by Kenneth Koch
3. Bird-Understanderer by Craig Arnold
4. In Love, His Grammar Grew by Stephen Dunn
5. So much happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye
6. Poem to an Unnameable Man by Dorothea Lasky
7. Marriage by Lawrence Rabb
8. Fear of Happiness by A.E. Stalling
9.  A Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood
10. Love Like Salt by Lisel Muller
11. How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett
12. How to Love Bats by Judith Beveridge
13. Should you Die First by Annabelle Despard

Photo Credits
Top Left: Kirsty Hannaby (Groom’s Sister)
Top Right (x 2) and Bottom Centre: Pippa Carvell Photography