Our Surprise Ceremony Readings

Us and Maggi
Let me share with you the fantastic readings done by our dear friend Maggi, who Peter and I have known since our days at Drexel. We gave her some general guidelines (no God, marriage-equality-friendly, less than 2 minutes, etc.) and asked her to select for herself. The results exceeded any of our hopes. I had started to tear up when I first walked down the aisle, but then I got my act back together and totally kept it under control...until partway through her reading when I had tears absolutely pouring down my face.

The underlining was hers, handwritten on her printed copy, and I think the line breaks were her own as well.

You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.

But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner's arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.

A Marriage
By Michael Blumenthal

And she also read us a Judy Garland quote which was part of the ceremony that wedded her to her amazing husband, Ed:

It was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.
It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

We really could not be luckier to have in our lives such brilliant, loving, theatrical, creative people who know us so well.