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I just started rewatching What Dreams May Come and noticed at the beginning where Chris and Annie are getting married, he is walking with her down the aisle in what is apparently a Catholic church. Whether it is actually Catholic or not is not necessarily important, rather that they are obviously attempting to portray a culturally traditional marriage.

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My confusion is that in traditional marriages, isn't the groom supposed to walk in ahead of the bride and wait while the father or someone else walks the bride in to give her away? Forgive me, I haven't attended many weddings. But as I searched for some information on Google, I couldn't find anywhere that mentions the groom walking the bride down the aisle unless its part of a different foreign culture such as Hinduism, which is obviously not the case of WDMC.

I can't think of other specific examples, but it seems like this isn't the only time we've seen this in television or movies. So my question is: is it traditionally common and/or appropriate for the groom and the bride to walk down the aisle together or is this simply a filming technique used to quickly show a marriage without going through all the traditional necessaries?

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  • The groom walks the bride down the aisle if you get married in Las Vegas. – steelersquirrel Nov 25 '15 at 3:11
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Movie wise, it is not a common scene. Most short wedding scenes will start with the Bride and Groom at the altar, skipping the walk altogether. Movies with long wedding scenes tend to have the traditional Father Giving Away the Bride, or go with some dialog to explain the change (Single Parent, Orphan/Adopted, Parent dead, Both parents (either straight or gay), or the "I'm not traditional so I want something else").

Modern day weddings are not strict on ritual. It's tradition for the Father to give away the Bride (and pay for the wedding, and a bunch of other things that have to do with Dowry, a subject that's rife with sexist notions), not a "do it this way or be excommunicated/shunned" contractual obligation. Modern weddings have been known to have all combinations of walking down the aisle.

But this is really off topic at this point. A google search for bride and groom walk down aisle together will give you lots of information.

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  • And "Appropriate" is so subjective that I'm not even going to touch that. – cde Nov 25 '15 at 2:55
  • You're right, "appropriate" isn't the correct word to use. – sanpaco Nov 25 '15 at 3:23

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