I used to be a marriage commissioner for the Alaska Court
System (sort of a justice of the peace).  I had great difficulty
with that duty.  I used to pray earnestly in the courthouse
bathroom before the ceremonies, mostly asking that the couples
would come to appreciate and fulfill the true holiness and
divine purpose in marriage--couples who obviously didn't realize
that marriage is God's institution, not the state's.  Gradually,
however, I came to conclude that because I was acting in a
strictly secular, public capacity, established as such by both
the state and the expectations of the couples involved, I was
really conducting a purely secular, legal civil event, with no
greater moral or religious implications than if I had been
conducting a civil trial (the couple who told me, mid-ceremony,
to "please hurry it up" may have helped me to this conclusion). 

     I thought I had neatly rationalized a clear and sharp
distinction between marriage before God, and "marriage" before
the state, until I had to deal with my own divorce.  Keeping
Matthew 19:6 in mind, I felt that the state had no business
dissolving my marriage established before God, but of course it
assumed jurisdiction nonetheless.  

      I would ask those of you proposing answers to this
question to consider this issue's logical extension: If
intercourse, or the mental intent of the parties, or the
ceremony of the church, or any combination thereof, establishes
marriage, then at what moment is it dissolved?  