Private Kiddushin and Nisuin

A thought struck me tonight while attending a symposium on the abolition of civil marriage. While listening to a Jew and Protestant present articles on, respectively, the abolition of civil marriage and the "Judeo-Christian" approach, I realized that I don't really care, its a much smaller issue for me than I initially thought.

If I know of a couple, both of whom are religious Jews, and they tell me they got married, that's it. If they tell me they got a marriage license but the wedding is next week, I don't look at them as married (we don't need to get into the halachic issues with that, should, cs"v, the marriage not go through). So I realized, from that perspective, its really a much smaller issue. Not a new thought, or a surprising one, just that it suddenly hit me.