Your wedding can change the rest of the world and not just yours.
Even if you have been living together for a while, getting married, committing to your wedding vows in front of your closest friends, will change your world.
Saying "I love you now and always" out loud in front of your closest friends and family and obtaining their pledge of support deepens and enriches your relationship.
The purpose of a wedding ceremony is to create the promises you will keep for a lifetime in the marriage of your dreams.
The support of your community makes your chance of sustaining your marriage greater.
If you're like many people in today's world, however, your community is scattered all over the country.
So your job, with your wedding is to keep finding ways to knit that community together.
Certainly the wedding ceremony will do that as it asks your friends and family to pledge support.
And you can set up your reception so that people get to know one another, and that will help as well.
But why not do something that will both knit the community together and provide a community a much-needed service? Plan your wedding around a charitable activity.

• Money raiser: you could choose a walk, run, bike to raise money for a charity.
  Find a community that's holding an event the same weekend you want to marry.
  Get married there instead of somewhere else.
  You can chose a place randomly, or you can find an event in your community.
  The money they raise could be your wedding present.
  Not everyone can participate in this sort of activity, although certainly supporters could come out and bring water and snacks and provide rides.
  The fun people have will encourage them to come back and do it again with you next year on your anniversary.
  Your marriage will be identified not just with sweet vows and a lavish party but also with a good cause.
  
• Community Involvement: Find a project that has meaning for you and gather your friends and family to participate with you.
  Habitat for Humanity has jobs that everyone can do.
  If you're getting married in the fall, towns often gather volunteers to help the elderly winterize their houses.
  Parks need to be worked on all times of the year.
  How wonderful would it be to spend time planting and raking and cleaning the park one day and then to turn around an hold your wedding there the next? The people in your community will identify your wedding and your marriage with an impulse toward good in the world.
  The wedding reception will be a celebration not only of your wedding vows but also of the fun and feeling of accomplishment the community feels.
  Who knows, they may plan to show up next year and do another project, or invite you to their town for something similar.
  As for you, every time you pass that house you helped build or weatherize or walk in the park you helped landscape, you will remember your wedding day and rededicate yourself to your marriage.
  If you're having marital struggles, revisiting the site of your wedding, where you worked so hard to change the world is sometimes enough to budge you from your stuck positions.