the dress is white for a reason!

Lately weddings have been a hot topic. My cousin is getting married and my former youth pastor as well. I am beyond excited to see what the Lord has planned for both of these marriages. Putting aside these things I have been thinking a lot about weddings and their significance. I felt compelled to share.

The Dress....It's beautiful...

Okay so your wedding dress is precious and you look amazing in it. However, I am not sure any of that matters if the bride doesn't understand the significance of her dress! We live in a culture where a wedding is a wedding. Doesn't really hold the importance it once did. That is a sad truth if you ask me. A Brides WHITE wedding dress is supposed to represent her purity. As she gives herself to her husband it is supposed to represent that she has saved herself. She wears white because she is sexually pure. So how is it okay that just anyone wears white on her wedding day? This frustrates me that it is taken so lightly. The significance of this dress reminds us that God wants us to remain pure for our wedding day. It shows us that God uses even the world and it's age old tradition to glorify his name and his plans. 

The Walk down the aisle...

Again there is significance in the memorable walk down the aisle and there is a specific reason why the brides Father is supposed to walk her down. There is a reason the Pastor asks "Who gives her to be married?". That questions is asked because up until that moment in a girls life, she belongs to her Father. God has given each of us girls as a precious gift to our parents. He entrusts us into their care and therefore they are in charge of us. And one day they will have to answer to God for the choices they made as our parents. If you know your world and Biblical history well enough you know dads used to be extremely strict when it came to marriage. The groom HAD to have the fathers permission or the father was the one to pick the the groom. So this maybe a be a bit extreme to our society now but it still holds both meaning and validity. When the father of the bride chooses to give his daughter away, she becomes her husbands. Her father no longer has ownership over her but her husband does. It is both amazing and hurtful to me that this means nothing to men and women of our age. Who cares what the father thinks? We are going to do what we want! That is so the mentality of our culture. 

"You may now kiss the bride"....

If you know me well enough you know I firmly believe in first kisses being saved for the wedding day. But oh how my belief is so the joke of our society. The media, celebrities, movies, TV shows, and magazines all tell us to go out and experience our first kiss as soon as possible. Have your first kiss or your gonna get made fun of. How ridiculously sad is that?? That is the pressure we put on young people? That repulses me. Why else would the pastor look at the bride and groom and give them permission to kiss? Because for the first time in their relationship it is okay to kiss because they are officially married. Call me crazy for thinking this way but I firmly believe that kissing opens the door to so many other things. And no girl wants to walk down the aisle on her wedding day feeling out of place because she knows she shouldn't be wearing the white dress and her daddy shouldn't be giving her away. For one simple reason...she already gave herself away...something that wasn't hers to give away in the first place....

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

^"19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."