Indian Wedding Vows and Readings

You should come close to me tonight wayfarer
For I will be celebrating you.
Your beauty still causes me madness,
Keeps the neighbors complaining
When I start shouting in the middle of the night
Because I can't bear all this joy.

I will be giving birth to suns.
I will be holding forests upside down
Gently shaking soft animals from trees and burrows
Into my lap.

What you conceive as imagination
Does not exist for me.

Whatever you can do in a dream
Or on your mind-canvas

My hands can pull - alive - from my coat pocket.
But let's not talk about my divine world.
For what I most want to know

Tonight is:
All about
You.

Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.

Love
So God will think,

"Ahhhhhh,
I got kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
For coffee and
Rolls."

Sing
Because this is a food
Our starving world
Needs.

Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.

A wife loves her husband not for his own sake, dear one, but because the Divine Beloved lives in him. A Husband loves his wife not for her own sake, dear one, but because the Divine Beloved lives in her. Children are loved not for their own sake, dear one, but because the Divine Beloved lives in them... All things are loved not for their own sake, but because the Divine Beloved lives in them. The Divine Beloved must be realized. Hearing about and meditating upon the Divine Beloved, you will come to understand everything in life...

As long as there is the sense of separateness, one sees another as separate from oneself... But when the Divine Beloved is realized as the indivisible unity of life, who can be seen by whom... who can be spoken to by whom, who can be thought of by whom, who can be known by whom?

"Do not deceive, do not despise each other anywhere. Do not be angry nor bear secret resentments; for as a mother will risk her life and watches over her child, so boundless be your love to all, so tender, kind and mild.

Cherish good will right and left, early and late, and without hindrance, without stint, be free of hate and envy, while standing and walking and sitting down, what ever you have in mind, the rule of life that is always best is to be loving-kind.

Gifts are great, founding temples is meritorious, meditations and religious exercises pacify the heart, comprehension of the truth leads to Nirvana, but greater than all is loving kindness.

As the light of the moon is 16 times stronger than the light of all the stars, so loving kindness is 16 times more efficacious in liberating the heart than all other religious accomplishments taken together."

Our feast, our wedding
Will be auspicious to the world.
God fit the feast and wedding
To our length like a proper garment.

Venus and the moon
Will be matched to each other,
The parrot with sugar.
The most beautifully-faced Beloved
Makes a different kind of wedding every night.

With the favor of our Sultan's prosperity,
Hearts become spacious
And men pair up with each other.
Troubles and anxieties are all gone.

Here tonight, You go again
To the wedding and feasting.
O beauty who adorned our city,
You will be groom to the beauties.

How nicely You walk in our neighborhood,
Coming to us so beautifully.
O our river, O One
Who is searching for us,
How nicely You flow in our stream.

How nicely You flow with our desires,
Unfastening the binding of our feet.
You make us walk so nicely, holding our hand,
O Joseph of our world.

Cruelty suits You well.
It's a mistake for us to expect Your loyalty.
Step as You wish on our bloody Soul.

O Soul of my Soul, pull our Souls
To our Beloved's temple.
Take this piece of bone.
Give it as a gift to our Huma.

O wise ones, give thanks
To our Sultan's kindness, who adds Souls to Soul,
Keep dancing, O considerate ones.
Keep whirling and dancing.

At the wedding night of rose and Nasrin
I hang the drum on my neck.
Tonight, the tambourine and small drum
Will become our clothes.

Be silent! Venus becomes the Cupbearer tonight
And offers glasses to our sweetheart,
Whose skin is fair and rosy,
Who takes a glass and drinks.

For the sake of God, because of our praying,
Now Sufis become exuberant
At the assembly of God's Absence.
They put the belt of zeal on their waists
And start Sama'.

One group of people froth like the sea,
Prostrating like waves.
The other group battles like swords,
Drinking the blood of our glasses.

Be silent! Tonight, the Sultan
Went to the kitchen.
He is cooking with joy.
But a most unusual thing,
Tonight, the Beloved is cooking our Halva.

May these nuptials be blessed for us, may this marriage be blessed for us,
May it be ever like milk and sugar, this marriage like wine and halvah.
May this marriage be blessed with leaves and fruits like the date tree;
May this marriage be laughing forever, today,tomorrow, like the houris of paradise.
May this marriage be the sign of compassion and the approval of happiness here and hereafter;
May this marriage be fair of fame, fair of face and fair of omen as the moon in the azure sky.
I have fallen silent for words cannot describe how the spirit has mingled with this marriage.

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcome
as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage.

May the blessings which flow in all weddings
be gathered, God, together in our wedding!
The blessings of the Night of Power,
the month of fasting
the festival to break the fast
the blessings of the meeting of Adam and Eve
the blessings of the meeting of Joseph and Jacob
the blessings of gazing on the paradise of all abodes
and yet another blessing which cannot be put in words:
the fruitful scattering of joy
of the children of the Shayak
and our eldest!

In companionship and happiness
may you be like milk and honey
in union and fidelity,
just like sugar and halva.
May the blessings of those who toast
and the one who pours the wine
anoint the ones who said Amen and
the one who said the prayer.