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Originally Posted by GaryMichaels  My wife has been concerned about it |
As far as I'm aware, the custom started in the days when marriages were arranged for political and social reasons, and the bride and groom had usually never even MET each other. Best for the family to sort these things out, you see, and having the prospective bride and groom meet or even see each other could mess up the whole deal.
It's also said that the custom of covering the bride with a veil that stayed over her face until the end of the ceremony was to keep the groom from seeing what he was getting and running off, but that's actually probably not true. (More likely, it was to keep "evil spirits" from seeing her and doing, well, evil things to her, or some such.)
An awful lot of wedding traditions and rituals are ancient and shrouded in mystery as to their origins, but they're just superstitions.