Love and marriage are defined in many ways.

Socially, marriage is a legal and binding contract recognized by all our government institutions that declares two individuals share equal benefits and responsibilities in matters of wealth and health, in life and in death.

Evolutionarily, marriage is the manifestation of a reproductive strategy based on monogamy and the principle of assortative mating. Each partner chooses and competes for the other based on phenotypic criteria assumed representative of a superior genotype. Reproductive fitness is maximized via the optimal transference of ones genetic material to progeny that will themselves continue to propagate and populate the gene pool.

Chemically, the marriage of two people creates a sum greater than its parts. Rather than additive, it is synergistic. Each partner is a positive allosteric modulator of the other, both are at once ligand and receptor and the double bond generated is covalent, permanent, and stabilized with a few disulfide bridges.

Neurologically, love is dopamine release into the nucleus accumbens, core not shell. It is neurogenesis and the formation of new and stable synapses. It is action potentials and long term potentiation, changes in firing thresholds and selective filtering of sensory stimuli.

Physically, marriage is a gravitational force of mutual attraction between two bodies, the perturbing of orbits until synchronized as one, the generating of a new nuclear family.

For [gaspode] and [mr. gaspode], two fine young scientists highly trained in the ways of logic, hypothesis testing and appropriate interpretation of analytical variables, the love between them is, well...magic. An irrational and reciprocal emotion that goes beyond our ability or our desire to explain. Many of us here tonight had the pleasure of watching these two fall madly, wildly, deeply in love and then, stay there. It was love at first sight and love at long distance. A love so strong and so sure, they have decided to forsake all others and formalize their union in the legal covenant of marriage. To no longer be a man and a woman, but to become a husband and a wife.

That is wonderfully unique and heartfelt. Congratulations all over again!

You must have been giggling at the beginning. It's witty!

Oh man, that is SO beautiful.

Three years ago next Saturday, we picked up my daughter from school and headed to the Arlington County courthouse. The next day, we emailed all our friends and family this url: http://s92131192.onlinehome.us/041404.htm

Hmm, maybe not as romantic as the gaspodes.

Love your Art Nouveau marriage certificate, mrmoonpie.

Beautiful, gaspode.

*scared to click on mrmoonpie's 'honeymoon pictures' link*

Thanks, y'all.

Miko: We'd already approved everything that she'd written, so we spent the whole part of the intro looking at everyone and cracking up. At the baffled faces on most of the crowd, as well as the smiling and nodding from all the scientists in the audience.

Dang it. It made me tear up. But I've always been a sap. *sniff sniff*

Yeah, but did you have Elvis? (and "little Elvis"?)

Seriously, though, quite lovely. You two make me smile everytime I see you together. Hang on tight, love.

Hee! Awesomely appropriate, gaspode!

phoenixc, hand over that box of tissues. *sniff*

Nicely done, gaspode! We were married on the beach, and we had one of our friends ordained through ULC, too. I wrote our whole ceremony, we wrote our own vows, it was perfect.

so much better than my first wedding, in so many ways.