Late in 2012, two individuals, surrounded by a few friends and family members, stood before a notary public. Backed by the testimony of two witnesses, they declared themselves husband and wife. Amidst the violence and political disarray cast over the country in recent years, this mundane, almost banal, occurrence stood out sharply and unsettled, triggering a series of events that mobilized in their wake large swathes of the Lebanese public: journalists, activists, politicians, religious authorities, and citizens. The local, print and digital, media announced it first, rather boisterously. Some went as far as claiming that the couple contracted “the first civil marriage in Lebanon.” The President of the Republic decided to initiate a debate by posting a “status change” on his Facebook page in which he asked, “We should work on drafting a civil marriage law. It is a very important step in eradicating sectarianism and solidifying national unity—MS. What do you think[?]”. Ten days later, the Mufti of the Republic issued a fatwa in which he warned “Muslim officials” in the government and legislature that “legislating (tashri’) and legalizing (taqnin) civil marriage” would compel him to declare them apostates (murtad). This paper considers the question, “Where is the state?,” by asking another, namely, “Where to seek the state?” It sketches a brief history of the formation of the system of religious confessions (sects) and personal status jurisdictions in Lebanon under the French Mandate in the 1920s and 1930s. Focusing on law and contemporary discourses of civil marriage, it traces the emergence of marriage as an eminently political formation, its meanings bound up with questions about the nature of the modern state and the identities upon which it rests. It suggests that the state be sought in the shifting articulations of embedded concepts.