Wedding

“They have no wine.” Mary’s first words in John’s Gospel sound like a caterer’s emergency, in the middle of a wedding at Cana. Jesus turns water into wine, and John notes that this was the first of his signs. There is something delightful in that choice: Christ’s public life opens at a wedding feast. On the keyboard, the wedding emoji range stops at 💒, 💍, 👰 and 🤵, which covers the ceremony but not quite the sacrament.

Here is a detail many guests never hear: in the Latin Church, the priest or deacon does not marry the couple. The spouses marry each other by exchanging their consent; the ordained minister receives that consent in the name of the Church and blesses the rings. “I take you to be my wife,” they say before witnesses, and then everyone heads off to the reception, hoping nobody runs out of wine this time.

Two rings resting on an open book, hands joined beneath a stole, a stone jar at Cana overflowing: propose the emoji that tells everyone who missed the day “we were married in church”. The aunt sobbing in the front pew is optional.