Thank you for wanting to celebrate our marriage with us! We're so thankful and humbled by all the Lord has done in our lives and couldn't be more thrilled to spend our wedding day with you! God says in His Word that the primary purpose of marriage is to glorify Him by reflecting the relationship between Christ and his church, a perfect display of sacrificial loving leadership and trusting supportive submission. What a privilege to strive for God's design in marriage and be an imitator of Him as we walk in love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. The Bible says in 1 John 4:19 that "We love because He first loved us." In fact we wouldn't know love apart from God revealing it to us. "By this we know love," 1 John says, "that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (each other). And in Romans 5:8 it says that God demonstrates His own love toward us in this, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". God demonstrated His love first by the giving of Himself for those who didn't deserve it, more specifically by the giving of His own Son to pay for the offenses committed by us against Him. How could we, after coming to know such love, sacrifice and forgiveness hold that from each other. We know marriage isn't always going to be easy, and we know we will need to work hard to fight our selfishness to prefer one another over ourselves, but we know as we ask the Lord for his help to set aside our selfish ways, we can strive to reflect His love and in turn only grow closer to one another and the Lord. "For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all so that they who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf." (2 Corinthians 5:14) We can't wait to spend April 24th with you!