Jumping the Broom

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be when it was time to walk down the aisle. When I saw all the faces turn to see me, and saw Jason at the other end, it was impossible to feel anything but love.

I had envisioned the moment where my dad would “give me away” for a long time, but when it was actually happening I realized how important the moment actually was. I don’t consider myself a piece of property or anything that needed to be “transferred” over to Jason as my husband, but it was more about the man who loved me before anyone else giving his blessing to the man that would be with me for the rest of my life. I was so comforted when I was finally standing hand-in-hand with Jason at the altar.

We did most of the traditional parts of a Christian wedding, including the lighting of a unity candle to signify joining our two lives into one.

After some readings from loved ones, prayer and communion, and a singing of the Lord’s Prayer, we said our vows and kissed for the first time as husband and wife!

But the wedding wasn’t over just yet! We still had one very important thing to do–jump the broom!

If you’re unfamiliar (which I suspect some of you may be, especially international readers), it’s an African-American tradition for the married couple to jump over a broom to symbolize crossing the threshold into married life. I’ve read that this goes back to slavery, when Blacks didn’t have the means or opportunity to have formal wedding ceremonies and so they created the broom ceremony. It’s now an African-American wedding tradition to jump the broom before you walk down the aisle together. Clearly Jason is not African-American, but I (and our future children) have Black ancestry and so we knew we wanted this cultural tradition to be a part of our wedding. He was just as excited as I was to jump the broom!

Then we were officially husband and wife! I’ve never seen either of our parents look so happy, which in turn made me even happier than I already was. I think our dads were crying even more happy tears than our moms. 😉

my parents, Marlil and David

the ring bearer and flower girl, Joel (child of family friends) and Ashley (little sis)

Jason’s parents, Jim and Maria

Jason and I walked out of the doors of the church to meet the beautiful vintage car that would take us to the venue for more more photographs. First time alone as husband and wife.

I’ve told you this funny story before but I’ll repeat it. As you can tell from the couple pictures above, my photographer had closed the church doors behind us so that it was only us (no family or friends or guests) outside. I assume she did this so that we could get pictures with just the two of us, but we actually wanted our friends and family there to see us depart! We had even ordered hundreds of vials of tiffany blue bubbles for people to blow at us as we walked away! We ended up leaving in a shiny 1956 Rolls Royce that NO ONE but us ever saw. It wasn’t her fault at all, we just failed to communicate details like that. No matter, we still thoroughly enjoyed the car in all it’s glory.

The car drove us to the venue where would take formal pictures with our bridal party. I wish I could say that the car ride there was full of romantic cuddling and sweet nothings…but it was quite the opposite. We were both crazy stressed out…ok I was crazy stressed out because there were a lot of loose ends at that point. I didn’t have my cell phone (no place for one in a wedding dress) but we desperately needed to contact our family and wedding party for several reasons (Ashley was lost…or at least my parents had told us they couldn’t find her, the seating chart for the reception was lost, my belongings were still in the bridal suite and needed to be cleared out…on and on and on…). Jason was amazing and did his best to talk me down and assure me that everything would be fine. By the time pictures rolled around I had calmed down and pulled myself together.

A kiss or two helped. 😉

Then our bridal party met us at the location in their limo and we took a bunch of group pictures. I was relieved to discover then that Ashley was not lost! My maid of honor had taken her with the bridal party. Thank goodness. We were all concerned and little Ashley (she was 7 at the time) was kickin’ her feet up in a stretch limo. Priceless.

Before we knew it we had so much fun taking pictures that we were late to the reception! Come back tomorrow to hear all about the parties (yes, we had TWO receptions…crazy).

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

——-

To read more about our wedding…

Part One: Planning for the Big Day (engagement story and wedding planning)

Part Two: You Only Get One (morning of the ceremony)