A Shared Promise

On February 21st, I officiated Bella and Jared's wedding ceremony at the McKinney Flour Mill, in McKinney, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

What Jared and Bella teach us is something both simple and surprisingly rare: that love doesn’t always arrive with drama or certainty, but with recognition. Sometimes love doesn’t shout. Sometimes it calmly taps you on the shoulder and says, this makes sense.
 
Bella grew up in a Jewish world that emphasized belonging. She writes that BBYO “quickly became my safe space,” a place where community wasn’t theoretical, but lived. That instinct—to show up, to care, to build something larger than oneself—followed her into Hillel, into AEPi, and into a role she cherished deeply, serving as Sweetheart to people she already considered family.
 
Jared’s path into Jewish life was quieter at first. For a long time, Judaism was simply a fact of heritage. But then came Camp Harlam, and with it what he calls a “visceral” sense of connection. He writes, “Being Jewish was more than a simple fact, it was now a key part of who I was.” Not because of rules or expectations, but because of energy, community, and meaning. Jared reflects often on energy—how it’s never created or destroyed, only transformed. It turns out that’s not a bad framework for marriage.
 
They met in late summer of 2021, in Denton, Texas, at a fraternity rush event that Jared describes, with admirable honesty, as “a charming, local, albeit kind of gross, Mediterranean restaurant.” Romance, as we learn from them, does not require ideal conditions.
 
Bella walked in late. Jared noticed immediately. He writes, “I could not take my eyes off of her even if I tried.” But what mattered more was what followed. Conversation came easily. Music came loudly. They sang inappropriate pop songs together on the ride home. Jared says it felt like “singing with a lifelong friend, and we had met an hour ago.” That sentence teaches us something important: intimacy isn’t about time, it’s about ease.
 
Bella says she cannot point to one defining moment when she knew. Instead, she speaks of “a collection of moments”—moments that accumulated quietly and convincingly. She writes, “Every challenge and struggle either of us faced, we never faced alone.” That is not romantic exaggeration. That is the language of partnership.
 
Jared’s answer to why marriage is almost disarmingly straightforward. He admits, “I honestly haven’t truly thought about why that much,” because to him, marrying Bella feels less like a decision and more like a truth. He keeps returning to the same phrase: “It just makes sense.” And then he adds something profound: that marriage is not only about proving love to the world, but about proving it to each other.
 
Bella echoes that grounding clarity. She calls Jared her “best friend and biggest cheerleader.” She says he makes her feel strong and independent while also supported. She knows they are young. She also knows they are ready. “I know we will get through life together,” she writes, “and be stronger because of each other.”
 
So what do Jared and Bella teach all of us?
 
They teach us that maturity is not measured by age, but by presence. By consistency. By the quiet confidence of knowing who stands beside you when things are complicated. They teach us that love doesn’t need spectacle to be real, and commitment doesn’t require certainty about everything, only clarity about each other.
 
They remind us that marriage is not the start of love. It is the moment when love says, we are choosing this—again, and again, and again. And if energy is never destroyed, only transformed, then what they are doing today is giving everything they already are together a deeper shape and a shared promise.
 
That is something worth learning from.