If you read my past blog posts, or if you know me, you know that I am a big fan of the bride and groom seeing each other prior to the ceremony, primarily for the sake of photos. It just makes the whole day go a lot smoother, and my experience is that couples who choose to do it this way are really, really glad they did. But I realize that many people cannot break with the idea of first seeing each other while walking down the aisle (my experience is that most brides are looking either at guests or at me and not at their groom while walking down the aisle). I realize that this is their wedding and I can only offer advice, otherwise I have to go with what is given. But that does not mean I cannot at least plead my case, and here I do it once again.
This link is to some photos taken of grooms (not my photos) when they saw their bride for the first time on their wedding day. The photos were compiled for this article because of the emotion expressed by the grooms. If you study the photos closely, you will see that of the 24 grooms/brides represented, only 4-5 were taken during the actual ceremony and walking down the aisle. All the others were taken during what is commonly called "the first look", when the bride and groom have their moment of seeing each other privately before the wedding. This goes to one of the arguments that I have previously made: that I see more emotion coming from grooms during the "first look" then I do during the walking down the aisle moment; and this goes to another argument I have made: the "first look" actually ends up being a much more special time for a couple than walking down the aisle.
Again, I realize that this is not the case for everyone, and in the case of this article, there certainly was emotion in the 4-5 "walking down the aisle" weddings represented by the photos. I would just encourage couples to think it through, perhaps throw out your original conventional thinking and consider this: how would you plan this day if this was the very first wedding ever?
