Yichud: Time with Each Other
Following the breaking of the glass, the bride and groom leave the chuppah first, followed by family, the wedding party, and the rabbi. The bride and groom go to the yichud room, the room where they will be alone with each other for about ten minutes.
The bride and groom should proceed directly to the yichud room since their time spent together there is, at least in most Ashkenazi traditions, actually part of the wedding ceremony itself. If the bride and groom wish to participate in a receiving line with their families before they go to the yichud room, this is acceptable, but the preferred path would be to go directly to the yichud room to spend their first few minutes of married life alone with each other.
The minutes in the yichud room are truly magical. While there is bustling outside, the bride and groom are safely locked away from the crowd. Spending quiet moments just with each other in the middle of your wedding is so meaningful, yet so rare.
At most weddings, the bride and groom are constantly busy interacting with guests and accepting people's good wishes. While this is important, the main goal of a wedding is to join the bride and groom together in a life of intimacy with each other.
The time spent in the yichud room together truly begins this ideal sense of the marriage relationship for the couple. It is a moment when they can look into each others' eyes and realize that for the first time they are spiritually and legally bound to each other forever. It is at this time that the bride can give the groom a ring if she has not already, and the bride and groom, in addition to sharing a profound, intimate moment of time together, can also break their fast if they are fasting.
Be sure to have the caterer put food in the yichud room for you. The food will usually be hors d'oeuvres or whatever the guests will be eating while you are in yichud and they are mingling. Especially if you have fasted, you will be very grateful to have a quiet moment to eat together before everyone vies for your attention.
In Jewish law, the minimum time spent in yichud is based on the time it would minimally take for the couple to consummate their marriage. A Jewish wedding is a ceremony that brings two people together not just spiritually, but physically and sexually. Though most couples do not actually have sexual intercourse in the yichud room, the potential for intimacy, emerging from their new marriage, must exist. Indeed, Judaism sees a couple's sexual life as something holy and powerful as well as private and bounded by modesty.
