Frank Mayhar wrote: >It's very ironic that authoritarian China has a better separation of >church and state, in at least this one respect, than the United States. >There, civil and religious/traditional aspects are almost entirely >divorced from one another. The civil bit is just registration and >getting the appropriate stamp(s) from the appropriate bureaucrac(y|ies), >while the religious/traditional one is the one that really "counts," >culturally. My wife and I were legally married three days after she >arrived in the US, but as far as she was concerned we weren't _really_ >married until we had the ceremony. Said ceremony had no legal status >whatsoever, but it's still the date we celebrate as our anniversary. > > I knew a couple when I was in the Air Force. He was a Sergent when they got married, while she was a civilian. He was stationed in Hawaii, but was on duty in Korea. There are some advantages to being married that include increased pay and better living quarters, so they decided to get married on the phone, allowing her to move onto the base, set up home, and plan for the big church wedding with all of their vacationing relatives a couple of months later. Note that Korea is on the other side of the International Date Line from Hawaii. Every year they celebrated his anniversary, her anniversary, and their anniversary.