The Beautiful Institution of Marriage

Two weeks ago, my family took a trip to Utah to go visit our families. Both my family and my wife's family live within about an hour of each other. The 4th of July holiday week seemed a good time to go, but we were also blessed to have the opportunity to attend the wedding of my wife's little brother. He's the last of our siblings to get married and he was married in the Manti Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on July 7th (7/7/07 ... a very busy day to get married ...).

For those unfamiliar with this church, a temple is a very special place. It is not used for normal Sunday meetings, but is used exclusively for weddings and for other like-ordinances. A marriage solemnized in a temple is one that has the potential to last for eternity. This is one of the greatest blessings that anybody can aspire to receive in this life.

So it was with great anticipation that we attended his wedding. Since we live in California and everybody else in my wife's family lives in Utah, we don't exactly get together very often to visit and we had not had an opportunity to actually meet the young woman that my brother-in-law was to marry. The first time we saw her was when we were in the temple; she was dressed up all in white and looked simply radiant. I can't think of any better place to meet a new member of the family! We had, of course, seen pictures, but meeting her there -- let's just say she looked radiant.

The wedding went beautifully. Her family were very kind and it was so very cute to see the two of them just being silly and happy together. They are both very young, and will probably struggle financially as most new couples do, but they are so very much in love that I'm confident they can overcome pretty much anything. I did take one very cute little video with my camera that we'll be sure to send to them: it's a video of the entire family out on the temple grounds being corralled for pictures. With the entire family whirling around them, talking and laughing and generally making it difficult for the photographer, the two of them are just standing there, looking into each other's faces, completely oblivious to the chaos around them. It was a beautiful moment, and I'm glad I caught it on camera.


The two of them are kind of flighty, though. The day of the wedding, they misplaced the rings ... twice! It caused some amount of anxiety on their part, but all worked out well in the end. I am hoping that this apparent collective disorganization of theirs was a result of their wedding excitement, and not typical behavior.

My brother-in-law's truck (a very old, very beat up truck that my father-in-law gave to them) was even decorated with Oreo's and cans on fishing line on the back. And as a surprise to everybody, they mounted a few soda cans that were unopened so that when they drove off the cans burst open and sprayed all over the place. It was a nice touch.