Wedding reading
from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"
A. A. Milne
“from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"” by A. A. Milne is a prose reading read at a wedding ceremony. It takes about 15 seconds read aloud, usually by a guest reader. It is in the public domain, so the full text is printed on this page and goes straight into a ceremony script.
The full text
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."
Public domain, so these words can be printed in a ceremony script or an order of service.
What it is about
Four lines, and they hold what the vows are about to say at length. Worth knowing before somebody asks: "as soon as I saw you, I knew a grand adventure was about to happen" and the "hundred minus one day" line are not in Milne — this is.
Read at a wedding ceremony. Themes: i just wanted to be sure of you · Piglet and Pooh · taking his hand · best friends marrying · children present · a child reader · very short · unsentimental.
Questions about reading it aloud
How long does “from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"” take to read aloud?
“from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"” takes about 15 seconds read aloud at a ceremony pace, which is slower than conversation — roughly 130 words a minute. That is the figure the run-sheet uses when it works out the timing for the whole service.
Who usually reads “from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"”?
Usually a guest reader rather than the officiant. “from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"” runs about 15 seconds, which is a manageable amount to hand to a friend or family member. Give them a printed copy of their own, in a size they can read without their glasses, and tell them where to stand and how you will introduce them.
Can “from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"” be printed in a ceremony script?
Yes. It is in the public domain, so the full text is on this page and can be printed in a script or an order of service.
Where this text was checked
Checked word for word against a full-text edition that is itself the authority — a Project Gutenberg or Wikisource transcription, a publisher’s own edition, or the issuing body’s page.
Checked
A reading is two minutes of the hour.
The rest is the welcome, the vows, the ring exchange, the pronouncement — and the timing that holds them together. Answer some questions about the couple and get the whole ceremony, written out, with this reading in its place.
Other readings that suit the same service
- On Becoming Real, from The Velveteen Rabbit55 secondsMargery Williams
- from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness15 secondsVictor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood
- Love Is a Temporary Madnessa minute and a halfLouis de Bernières
- A Lovely Love Storya minute and a halfEdward Monkton
- Oh, the Places You'll Go!a minute and a halfDr. Seuss
- On Marriage, from The Propheta minute and a halfKahlil Gibran