Dale Morgan married tonight, and as usual, I came away soured.

Twentieth-century Christian weddings are the vainest, most meaningless forms. There is no vestige of reality.

The witnesses dress for a show. The flesh is given all the place. The songs are absurd if one paid any attention to the words, but no one does; they simply listen to how it is sung and not what it means. Candles are useless, but expensive trifles. Ushers help no one, but appear very officious, and the ceremony itself is the most meaningless hodgepodge of obsolete grammar and phraseology—sounds like a schoolboy’s translation of Cicero.

And the stupid form of asking who gives this bride in marriage! Who cares? Everyone knows it’s her father or uncle or some such sweating pawn standing before the altar.

Talk of Romanism! We fundamentalist are a pack of moodloving show-offs. I’m sure the minor prophets would have found a subject for correction in this affair.

I must read this to myself on my wedding day, if I have one.

–12 August, 1949