Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara were official witnesses Saturday at the Maine wedding of two old friends.

Bush and his wife attended the wedding of Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalsen in Kennebunkport as “private citizens,” spokesman Jim McGrath told the Washington Post.

“This is such a wonderful time for change in our legal system,” Clement, who said she’s known Bush for years, wrote the Post in an email from the couple’s honeymoon. “Who would be best to help us acknowledge the importance of our wedding as our friends and as the former leader of the free world. When they agreed to do so we just felt that it was the next acknowledgment of being ‘real and normal.’”

While the elder Bush hasn’t expressed public support for gay marriage, his son, former president George W. Bush, warned in an interview earlier this year against criticizing gay couples “until you’ve examined your own heart.”