Weddings? What weddings?

I find one of the threads for the recent reporting on the Prop 8 decision intriguing.  News reports are circulating regarding the resumption of same-sex weddings.

SAN FRANCISCO-- The federal judge who struck down California's gay-marriage ban said Thursday that same-sex weddings can resume next week unless an appeals court intervenes before then.

This issue is state recognition of same-sex marriage, isn't it?  Any two people can have a wedding.  Indeed, I don't see why one couldn't hold a wedding ceremony between a man and his pet tarantula.

To be fair, it's easy enough to imagine a same-sex couple only considering a wedding where the state recognizes the resulting union as a marriage.  And it's conceivable that persons who traditionally officiate at weddings insist on paperwork reflecting the blessing of the state.

That said, the reporting tends to create a misleading impression that a wedding ceremony between members of the same sex can't proceed so long as Prop 8 proponents or their ilk (gasp) have their way.

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As for the recently completed trial, the results have stimulated some great commentary.  Judge Vaughan Walker's handling of the case makes it look as though he granted standing primarily for the purpose of giving him the opportunity of presiding over a show trial.  The show trial would grant him power over the outcome of a case in which he may hold a palpable interest.  Walker has since offered that the courtroom defenders of Prop 8 probably do not have standing to appeal his decision.  How convenient!  Even Time took note:

(A)t least one constitutional-law scholar in California is suggesting that by trumpeting the issue of standing, Walker has opened a hornet's nest he may have been better off leaving undisturbed. "If the proponents don't have standing to appeal, then it's entirely plausible that the courts will rule that they did not properly have standing to go to trial," Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, told TIME Thursday evening. "This is an issue he glossed over when he allowed them to intervene in the trial.

Hmm.