I, along with a couple billion (?!?) people, watched the royal wedding today. I didn’t expect to stay up, but was intensely curious about what would happen. Plus, I’m a sucker for weddings (it pretty much comes with my gender). I loved two things. First, I loved the stolen glances and private conversations between the couple in the midst of lots of formality and crowds. Second, I loved the fact that I was watching a church service unfold along with billions of others. The theology of marriage was clearly center stage.

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of crashing attending a wedding rehearsal & wedding for a couple I didn’t know. I’m taking pastoral care and was required to shadow a pastor in the process of officiating a wedding, so I ended up in a beautiful park following around one of my professors as he worked with a couple.

My professor had told me that this was a really solid couple and that their ceremony is going to be very “them.” This wedding was completely different from Will and Kate’s royal wedding.

I love that they asked the officiant to talk about Matthew 5:14-16 and 1 John 1:7 as defining verses for their relationship instead of the typical wedding passages. I love that they served communion at the wedding to everyone in the form of a cracker and a grape. I love that their reading was Dr. Seuss. I loved their wedding because it was beautiful, but it was also a lot of fun. It was a “heavenly day” as one of the bridesmaids sang.

Seeing two young couples in beginning of their married life together makes my heart soar. Relationships are full of hope and promise on a wedding day. We’re invited to see a spiritual reality unfold on a wedding day. As the Bishop of London reminded us today, “In some sense, every wedding is a royal wedding” because it represents the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Weddings also bring me back to the time when Matt and I were in the same place. We have always been dorky and silly and playful–the best of friends. In fact, it’s hard for me to believe there was a time when I didn’t know him. Our wedding day was “us” as well. I mean, how often do you hear music from Harry Potter as a processional and get to ride water slides at a reception?

I continue to be increasingly thankful for Matt. In many ways, he is still exactly who I met and fell in love with. In other, significant ways, he’s grown exponentially. After seeing him preach a couple times in the past few weeks, I am beginning to see the reality of what I’ve always known: that our marriage is a huge part of our ministry.

My prayer for both of these young couples is that their marriages would truly represent Christ and the Church: sacrificial love and unwavering faithfulness. I also pray that “old” married couples, like Matt and I, never lose the sense that our marriage is part of something much bigger than ourselves.