Congratulations!

My wife's pastor (from Wisconsin) had to get a form from the county in which we were married in order to officiate the ceremony. I imagine he had to submit some evidence that he was an ordained Methodist minister, but I don't know what.Our Minnesota marriage liscense wasn't official until it had been officiated and witnessed. So our pastor was very much imbued by the government with the ability to officiate a wedding.

I'm a strong believer that marriage isn't just a personal covenant, it's a social one. So largely the tenor of our wedding - officiated by a pastor in our college's chapel - was because we knew that stuff was important to our families.If it had been just us we were worrying about we would have gone to a justice of the peace and have done with it, or for that matter, we might not have even bothered in the first place.But I had no objection to a religious ceremony, because the wedding isn't just a party for her and I - it's a social obligation. In return, we get social approval of our unity. And it wasn't like the Methodists are anything but low-key Protestants, anyway. There wasn't much religious stuff that I had to do.