Somewhere in the afterlife, the ghostwriters of Fiddler on the Roof are taking notes. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married Friday night at Madison Square Garden, and the man who sealed the deal was not a priest, not a judge, not a chaplain flown in from a Manhattan cathedral. It was Adam Sandler, star of Billy Madison and The Waterboy, presiding over one of the most-watched weddings of the decade with all the rabbinic authority of a guy who once got in a fight with a golf club.

Swift and Kelce, both 36, tied the knot in front of 1,000 guests dressed to the nines, in a ceremony a spokesperson described in a statement: “The ceremony joined both families together and was officiated by friend Adam Sandler.” Swift’s brother Austin served as her Man of Honor, Kelce’s brother Jason stood as Best Man, and when the vows were done, the jumbotrons outside the arena lit up with “JUST&T MARRIED!” for the crowds gathered on Seventh Avenue to see. The bride and groom wore custom Christian Dior Haute Couture designed by Jonathan Anderson, Louboutin made the shoes, and Cartier supplied the jewelry. Sandler, according to TMZ, also revived his Wedding Singer glory days and performed an original song for the newlyweds.

Sandler’s connection to the couple goes back to Kelce’s cameo in Happy Gilmore 2 and Swift’s own admission that her song “Wi$h Li$t” drew on Sandler’s 1996 character. “He has this happy place where he goes into… This is where he escapes to mentally in times of stress, pressure, anxiety or chaos,” Swift told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “That chorus of that song is me just describing what my happy place is.” Naturally, when it came time to pick an officiant, the happy place found its man.

Here is the part that ought to make headlines of its own. According to the state of New York, Sandler did not need a seminary degree, a house of worship, or a single day of religious training to legally marry two of the most famous people on the planet. Any adult can apply for a One-Day Marriage Officiant License in New York State and stand at the altar, no questions asked. Sandler filled out a form. That is the entire ordination process.

In Jewish law, a wedding does not happen because an officiant performs it. It happens through kiddushin, an act of sanctification in which the groom formally consecrates his bride before witnesses, historically through the giving of a ring and the recitation of a specific declaration. The person leading a Jewish wedding, the mesader kiddushin, does not create the marriage himself. He ensures that a legal and spiritual structure thousands of years old is carried out with precision, that the witnesses are valid, that the ketubah, the marriage contract, is properly written. Sandler, delightful as he is, was not doing that Friday night. He was doing paperwork with a punchline.

None of this is a knock on Sandler, who by every account showed up as a genuine friend and gave the couple a memorable night. But the ease with which American law hands out marriage authority for an afternoon says everything about how far the modern wedding has drifted from the Bible’s own definition of the institution. Swift and Kelce had the Dior gowns, the A-list guest list, and the comedian with the mic. What they did not have, and did not need under New York State law, was anyone remotely resembling a rabbi.

The Bible set the bar for marriage at the very moment of creation, and that bar has not moved in three thousand years. Two people become one flesh. Everything else, the title, the license, the jumbotron announcement, is just the show around it.