Summer is a season of weddings. A bride and groom walk down the aisle surrounded by supportive friends and family and make their vows before the Lord. Afterwards, loved ones join the newly married couple for a festive celebration. We know that marriage ceremonies are important - occasions of both solemnity and deep joy. What may not be as obvious is that the celebration afterwards is also vital. The chapter on betrothals and weddings in Conjugial Love gives several guidelines for what should come before and after a wedding, but it only lists two important features of the wedding itself: it should be solemnized by a priest (Conjugial Love 308) and it should be celebrated with festivity:
“The wedding should be celebrated with festivity. The reason is that the love which the bride and bridegroom felt before the wedding then descends into their hearts and radiates from there throughout their whole bodies, so that they begin to feel the delights of being married. As a result, their minds are filled with festive thoughts, and as far as is permissible and respectable, they also let themselves go in festive behavior. In support of this, it is useful for the festive feelings of their minds to be shared by others, and for them to be introduced into the joys of married love in this way.” (Conjugial Love 309)
It is no coincidence that the Lord’s first public miracle of turning water into wine (John 2:1-11) took place at a wedding party. A wedding in the Word signifies the marriage of the Lord and His church - when His infinite goodness is conjoined with the truth that we learn and live from Him. When this marriage takes place, we experience joy - a kind of joy that wants to be shared with others. This joy is the Lord’s ultimate purpose in creation - His love is such that He wants nothing more than to create others outside of Himself, be conjoined to them, and make them happy to eternity (see True Christian Religion 43). There is a very real connection between this love and the love in a marriage between husband and wife, since marriage plays a unique role in allowing the Lord to carry out His goal of a heaven from the human race; as we read in Conjugial Love 68, “All delights have been gathered into this love, from the first to the last of them, because of the excellence of the use it serves, surpassing that of all other loves. The use it serves is the propagation of the human race and so of the angelic heaven.” What could be more worthy of celebration and festivity?