Jumping The Broom At Our Wedding

Happy Juneteenth, friends! In honor of today’s celebration, and Loving Day last weekend, I was so excited to write this post about something very special to me.

First of all, if you aren’t familiar with Juneteenth, it is marked as the official day of slavery emancipation. While President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came in 1863, there were still over 250,000 enslaved people still under Confederate control in places as far west as Texas. Freedom finally came two years later when over 2,000 Union soldiers marched into Galveston, Texas on June 19th 1865 and declared every enslaved person free by executive decree! This celebratory day became known as “Juneteenth”, and is now a national holiday in America as of this past week. Unfortunately, as we all know, history has not been fair to the Black community, so making this very important day a holiday in our nation is the very least we can do. Click here if you’d like to read more about the history of Juneteenth.

Every year my husband DeAndre and I try to celebrate this day together. Celebrating Juneteenth together is something very dear to my heart as the wife to a Black man, and is a tradition we will continue with our children. Last night, he made an amazing Southern feast, we popped some champagne, and watched the movie “Loving”. If you’re not familiar with Loving Day, it’s on June 12, and is named after the court case of Virginia vs Loving, which made it unconstitutional to prohibit marriage based on race. Bottom line, interracial marriages being illegal was NO MORE in our country! Truly a day to celebrate and remember, especially for DeAndre and I! You can read more about it here. In 2016 the movie “Loving” came out based on their lives, and I highly recommend watching it, even if you’re not in an interracial relationship. It’s on Netflix, so be sure to add it to your watchlist ASAP (and bring tissues!).

Because there have been so many important days recently involving freedom and emancipation, I wanted to write about something DeAndre and I did on our wedding day to honor his Black heritage – jumping the broom! Jumping the broom was a part of our ceremony that we chose to include, and is so near and dear to our hearts.

What is jumping the broom? This a time-honored tradition that dates back to the 1800’s during slavery in the United States. Enslaved couples were not legally allowed to be married under Confederate law. Jumping over a broom was their way of sealing the marriage and making it official. It represented leaving the old and jumping into the new, and quickly became tradition among slave communities. Through the years couples have continued to jump the broom at their weddings, as a way to honor their ancestors and remember the sacrifices made.

When talking to my husband DeAndre about what this moment meant for him, he expressed to me how jumping the broom at our wedding meant so much to him as a Black man. It was a way to remember his Black heritage, honor his ancestors, and continue their tradition. To DeAndre, jumping the broom was about remembering his roots and where he came from, but also looking towards the future. We are so glad we made the decision to add it in to our wedding ceremony, and is often reflect on and cherish.

I found our wedding broom on Etsy, from a Black woman who makes custom wedding brooms. You can shop her site, Brooms Baubles & Brides, here! We have our wedding broom on display on a shelf in our living room, and I can’t wait to give it our kids one day so they can use it!

I hope this Juneteenth weekend you are taking time to reflect on this country’s past, and how we need to move forward in the future. Though we have come so far from where we were in 1865, we have a lot more progress that needs to be made. Countless Black lives have been lost in the fight for freedom. It’s up to us as a country to make intentional decisions every day to do better than the day before.

XO Megan