Brandon Malone Photography

Tra­di­tion­ally, a cou­ple will not see each other on the day of their wed­ding till the groom sees his beau­ti­ful bride walk­ing down the aisle in all of her radi­ant glory.   See­ing each other before the wed­ding is bad luck sup­pos­edly.  So this tra­di­tion is also a bit of super­sti­tion.  Many cou­ples now days are start­ing to let the tra­di­tion go for the sake of other wed­ding day bonuses.

In my blog post called Wed­ding Group Pho­tos, I talk about some tra­di­tions.  One of the sites I ref­er­ence if the knot.com.  They have a list of tra­di­tions and their ori­gins.  Here’s what the site says about the his­tory of not see­ing each other pre-ceremony:

In the early days of arranged mar­riages, the bride and groom often never saw each other at all before the wed­ding. Even when cou­ples were acquainted before they mar­ried, it was still con­sid­ered bad luck for the groom to glimpse the bride pre-ceremony, as she would not be pure and new. Nei­ther was the bride sup­posed to see her­self — it was believed that if she saw her reflec­tion she would leave some of her­self behind in the mir­ror.

Accord­ing to this, if a bride wants to be true to the super­sti­tion, then she should avoid see­ing her­self in the mir­ror as well.  I don’t see that happening.

The alter­na­tive to this tra­di­tion is what is often referred to as First Glance, or some­thing along those lines.  In this sce­nario, the cou­ple not only sees each other pre-ceremony, but also does all of their group pho­tos pre-ceremony.  This really is a great way to go for many rea­sons, but it’s at the cost of a long cher­ished tra­di­tion.  So which way is right for you?

Let me high­light the advan­tages that I’ve expe­ri­enced per­son­ally with my cou­ples that have let go of tradition:

• They can go right to their cock­tail hour or recep­tion after the cer­e­mony instead of miss­ing it
• They spend more time with their friends and family
• They spend more time enjoy­ing the party they paid for
• They aren’t hun­gry or stressed throughout
• The group pho­tos expe­ri­ence is calm instead of chaotic
• There is less of a cat-herding experience
• The group pho­tos wrap up more quickly
• Every­one is present and ready instead of dis­tracted and scattered
• The expe­ri­ence is less rushed
• Every­one is focused on instead of reliv­ing the cer­e­mony and anx­ious for the reception
• More options on where to do the group photos

When we do this for a cou­ple, we actu­ally han­dle it very del­i­cately.  So far, we’ve never had a cou­ple feel robbed of an expe­ri­ence on their wed­ding day or live to regret the deci­sion.  No one has ever said that they felt any less excited at the altar.  Every­one that has done this, has loved it, raved about it, and rec­om­mended it.

Basi­cally what we do is pho­to­graph the groom with his men and his fam­ily while the bride puts on her fin­ish­ing touches.  Then we hide the groom, putting his men in charge of keep­ing him in hid­ing, and we bring in the bride and pho­to­graph her with her ladies and fam­ily.  After fin­ish this sequence, we hide the bride, bring out the groom, have him look away, and then bring in his beau­ti­ful bride to sur­prise him for the first time.  We then give the two a few min­utes to enjoy each other’s com­pany, cap­tur­ing a few can­dids.  At this point, we pose them for a few pho­tos of just the two of them together, and then start work­ing in all of the other arrangements.

Since every­one that needs to be there gen­er­ally already is there, it goes fairly quickly.  I’ve had enough time left over before that we just started cap­tur­ing fam­ily moments as every­one casu­ally inter­acted while they waited to move on to the cer­e­mony.  One of our cou­ple that did this ended up arrang­ing a sin­gle photo with all of their guests at the recep­tion site, which was the only group photo they did after the ceremony.

There really are tons of ben­e­fits to doing all of the pho­tos pre-ceremony.  But the trade off is hav­ing to let go of tra­di­tion.  And depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, you might sac­ri­fice being able to have your pho­tos taken at the altar.  That’s some­thing that would have to be looked in for each indi­vid­ual case.  In the end, it’s a deci­sion that is only up to the cou­ple to make.  Even with the many advan­tages, they are all a waste if one of the most impor­tant parts of the day is that one moment dur­ing the cer­e­mony when the bride is seen by her groom for the first time.