This is our Everything I Know About Love wedding reading, which is a memoir by the British journalist Dolly Alderton, where the author recounts the adventures of a woman navigating her 20s. It's refreshingly honest and funny, certainly making her the perfect candidate to share for our wedding readings! This is a reading that has been used in several of our real weddings too, so we know it's tried and true and that you'll love it as well. In the reading below, Dolly Alderton basically describes what she finds love to mean to her and how it pops up in normal everyday life. All her conclusions are based on her previous and current relationships. If you want to download a copy to print and take to your ceremony, we've got you sorted.

Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

I know that love can be loud and jubilant...It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them.
It’s laughing until you wheeze.
It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before.
It’s skinny-dipping at dawn.
It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.
It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient force of nature.
I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.
It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee.
It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.
It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine.
It’s saying ‘You’re safer here than in a car’ as they hyperventilate on an EasyJet flight to Dublin. It’s the texts: ‘Hope your day goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’. I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport, or in a traffic jam.
Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.

This Everything I Know About Love wedding reading is such a unique choice. It is definitely now one of our faves. It's not particularly poetic or romantic but it has refreshing honesty and relates to normal everyday life. So it seems comforting and makes such a good reading to really help set the tone for your ceremony. Also, don't forget to take a look at our wedding readings from books for some more inspiration. What else do you need to know for your ceremony? Well, here's some advice on writing your wedding vows. Although maybe you want your vows to be more personal? Here's some advice on how to personalise your wedding vows. We also have all the info on your wedding order of service as well!