Alone time

I debated and actually sort of agonized over whether my husband and I should spend the night before our wedding apart. Did we want to tempt the fabled "bad luck" of seeing each other on our wedding day? It really came down to two issues.

First I had to research the tradition to decide if it even made any sense for us and who we are as a couple. That's how I decided whether or not to use almost every tradition attached to weddings. After a little digging, it turned out that brides and grooms were kept separate so that one party could not change their mind at the last minute based on looks in arranged marriages where the betrothed couples had never met. This is not an arranged marriage. The tradition of this stand point seemed lacking. I believe in our culture today, we're suppose to be kept separate to keep us from fighting out of stress. Again, if we can't work together during stressful occasion, we don't need to be getting married yet. Life is stressful, after all, and I chose to seek him out in times of stress, not avoid him.

Once tradition was thrown out the window, we had to look at practicality. I know that waiting to see him at the head of the aisle for the first time that day would have been far more dramatic and climactic. Other brides have told me that they didn't think they'd get the much of a reaction if they'd seen their groom all day leading up to that. So, I worried I was robbing us of this feeling. Worse, I worried I was robbing our guests of witnessing that heightened emotion. Semantics would have been a nightmare though. We did not hire coordinators. Our family and friends pulled together to set up the venue in an hour and a half....part of which I had to disappear to put my dress on and finish my hair. Our venue was a wide, open space. There was no way for us to both be in the venue at the same time without seeing each other. The practicality of avoiding one another seemed even more stressful than coming together to make this wedding ROCK.

After much thought and many conversations with one another, we decided that we really didn't want to be apart during one of the most exciting days of our relationship so far. No energy was put into staying away from each other. It actually added to the calmness of our day. It was a wonderful decision for us, and it lead to one of my favorite mornings ever.