Wes said: ...Any union between a man and a woman prior to marriage doesn't automatically make them a married couple and the church is not just validating an existing union. If you are referring to sexual relations this doesn't automatically make them married. Certainly they are joined together in the sin of fornication but that doesn't equate to a marriage.
Upon further thought (because I commented on that matter slightly in another thread a while back) I realize that sex doesn't automatically equal marriage. In posing my though about the union being already existant, I was thinking more along the lines of the couple already being committed to each other. The ceremony would just be publicly validating this commitment that had already been made (at least in terms of the way our modern ceremony is done). Is this correct?
