First Meeting

The groom not seeing the bride was a tradition that comes from times that are long passed, no longer are the parents of the bride and groom responsible for arranging marriages for their children. It is no longer necessary, or a fact of distance, that the bride and groom be kept separate before their wedding.Though people think that the groom seeing the bride could be bad luck, it was once considered a method of protecting the marriage. Often, long before today’s ‚Äö”Post Modern Era‚Äö” he bride wouldn’t see her husband before her wedding day due to the fact that the marriage was arranged, so as to be mutually beneficial to the parents of the bride and groom. The groom wasn’t allowed to see his bride for fear that he may not to marry her and there by shame the parents.

Today, the tradition lives on as a superstition in hopes if the bride and groom don’t see each other on their wedding day they will have a long lasting marriage. Marriage is built on trust, relationship, and communion with God not traditions of luck bringing accomplished on the wedding day.

It is for the reason of a very intimate time of prayer and personal conversation that I have started to recommend that the bride and groom see each other before their wedding.

Often the bride and groom don’t receive any time for themselves on their wedding day, it is even more rare that the groom receives the opportunity to look at his wife, or wife to be, and just take in the day, the moments, and the memories. There is a rush of emotion that comes with a groom seeing his bride and a bride seeing her groom on a wedding day that can’t quite be explained, perhaps it is the promise and fulfillment of what they have felt in their hearts for so long.

A marriage is first something that starts at the heart, on a wedding day it is best that the bride and groom be given the opportunity to recognize that connection and support each other.

I have included photographs taken the Goyer Wedding where the Bride and Groom decided that they wanted to see each other before their wedding, pray with each other and spend some private time with each other.