Friday, February 04, 2011

The Discworld Wedding Quotes Project

It's time for another wedding project!

I've been working on this one for the best part of a year. Steve and I are both Discworld fans - you can determine the point at which we moved in together by checking at which point in the series we start to only have one copy of each book in the house - and I wanted to incorporate some Pratchett into the wedding in some way.

The wedding ceremony as described in I Shall Wear Midnight seemed somewhat impractical for a person with limited mobility, and our venue probably would have had something to say about it as well, so I settled for digging up a few choice quotes about relationships.

My first stop was the internet, but googling for "discworld wedding quotes" just seemed to turn up forum after forum where brides and grooms asked if anyone knew of Discworld quotes suitable for weddings, and not much by way of answers.

So I decided to check for myself. One book at a time. Through the currently published canon of 32 Discworld Series books, 5 Discworld for Younger Readers books, and several "extras" such as The Last Hero, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, and of course, Where's My Cow?. It took a while.

The biggest difficulty is that Pratchett is a master of extended metaphor. You find the most beautiful descriptions of love and relationships, but you also find that you'd have to copy out three sections of five pages each of backstory, most of which would be completely irrelevant text, to explain why something like "but they went the long way, and saw the elephant," is so meaningful.

Nevertheless I now have a document with some 17 pages of Discworld quotes relating to weddings, marriages, and love in various forms. I see no point in keeping this to myself when other people clearly want the information, so I will spread them over several posts and then edit this post to link back to them.

There are some books I haven't checked - the diaries, for instance - and some whose inclusion I'm still unsure about, such as Nation and Good Omens. There will also be quite a few quotes that I've missed. Please feel free to fill any gaps.

Part One
The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, Guards! Guards!, Eric, and Moving Pictures.

Part Two
Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, Small Gods, and Lords and Ladies.

Part Three
Men At Arms, Soul Music, Interesting Times, Maskerade, Feet Of Clay, Hogfather, and Jingo.

Part Four
The Last Continent, Carpe Jugulum, Fifth Elephant, The Truth, Thief of Time, and Night Watch.

Part Five
Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, Thud!, Making Money, and Unseen Academicals, plus The Last Hero and Where's My Cow?

Part Six
The Tiffany Aching books: The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full Of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight.

Part Seven
The Amazing Maurice (except I couldn't find anything) and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook.

12 comments:

Naomi J. said...

We've put a Buffy quote about weddings on our wedding website. I'll soon be adding more!

Mary said...

Steve does not Understand about Buffy.

Emma said...

You are at this moment, my personal hero. My fiancee and I have been trying to incorporate all of our nerdiness into our day of getting weddinged and this is tremendously helpful.

Mary said...

You're welcome, Emma! It's nice to know it's being picked up and used by other couples.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this. It's exactly what I was looking for.

I'm a massive Discworld fan, other half isn't fussed, but I know he's going to love some of the Sybil/Vimes stuff.

twowheelmike said...

Thanks for quotes. I too was looking for Nanny Ogg quotes for my daughter's wedding. We are both TP fans. i had found the one about the way to a man's heart. Thanks for the fun anyway.

Michelle said...

Thanks a million for all your work- my sister is getting married, and we're big Discworld fans. I want to put together something fun for before the wedding, and your site is a huge help!

Cuttysark said...

Nice blog, glad to meet another fan. More power on your blog.

Cheers and hugs,
Wedding Quotes.

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful - thank you so much for taking the time to research, write and post this! I've just used a number of these quotes for a book of advice on love and marriage for a friend's hens - she loves Pratchett, and so your blog has been the perfect internet post!

Anonymous said...

I have made a heart to send to another Pratchett fan on one of the fb sites who was asking her DW 'family' to send hearts for a display at her wedding. I wanted to put some quotes from TP in it and Google kindly found this site - perfect. The heart (a paper woven thing you can put things in), is now full of slips of paper each with a quote on.

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant!

I have been picking up copies of the books and struggling to find quotes, Thief of Time is suitable for a church as well!

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