I could tell I was a geek, because as I sat in fanf and rmc28's wedding this afternoon, I was sure that I was supposed to be thinking solemn thoughts about love, lifelong companionship, and possibly God. Instead I found myself – as usual at weddings, come to think of it – mostly worrying about the transactional integrity of the procedure.

What happens if the bride and groom have exchanged vows but haven't yet been pronounced man and wife, and then the ceremony is unavoidably interrupted by (for example) the church catching fire: does the wedding roll back, or commit? What happens if the interruption occurs after they've been pronounced man and wife but before signing the register: are they married in the eyes of God but not the Law, and might they have to rectify the legal side at a registry office at some later date? And worse still, what happens if one has made the vows to the other but not vice versa: do you end up with one person having sworn in the sight of God to be faithful to someone who has sworn nothing in return, and thus (at least theoretically) the latter is able to go and marry someone else leaving the former poor sap in a bit of a bind? It all seems terribly fraught with danger; there should be proper backups kept in case of accident.

Anyway; fortunately nothing of the sort happened and the happy couple are now safely married. I'm off out to the bring-and-share-food reception soon, but first I'm briefly back at home so as to cook the food I'm bringing.

Extra points to this wedding for having the hymn music in the service booklet as well as the words, so that I actually knew what I was supposed to be singing; unfortunately it turned out that I'd forgotten how key signatures worked (or at least couldn't dig it out of my dusty mental music-theory attic fast enough, perhaps because I was still worrying about wedding atomicity :-), but I got there in the end.