The vows took a day; the marriage takes years of small repairs — and you can begin with the kindness you can give.

The thought behind it

The horizon is set deliberately far out. From there urgency looks smaller and consistency looks enormous. Under Couple the romance is a thousand small repairs, made quickly, before the small thing became the whole thing. Watch what “16” does here. Change it and the sentence becomes comfortable again, which is how you know it matters.