There never was a brush touched to canvas nor a chisel to marble without some great preexisting idea. So, too, every atom and every rose is realization and concretion of an idea existing in the Mind of God from all eternity. All creatures below man correspond to the pattern God has in His Mind. A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God's idea of a tree. In marriage too, love begins with a dream.
Love then is an act of faith, a declaration of the unseen as the real.
If ideals are not high, if the blueprints of love are not beautiful, then the marriage itself will not be beautiful. As some minds can listen to the barbaric tom-tome of antimusic, so there are hearts that can be satisfied with a body without a soul. Hence the need of a moral preparation for marriage. But it is the only instance where a vow is taken without a novitiate. If it had a year of novitiate, how few would enter into it.