The First Moment Alone

Yichud (togetherness, seclusion) is the period immediately after the wedding ceremony in which the newly married couple withdraw alone together to a closed room, away from the guests, before joining the celebration. In many Ashkenazi communities this seclusion is itself understood to have legal weight, completing the marriage: the couple's private withdrawal, witnessed as to its beginning by those who see them enter, is taken as a consummating stage of the rite. Because the newlyweds have often fasted on the wedding day, the interval is also the practical moment at which they first eat together.

The custom draws on the wider Jewish law of yichud, which regulates the circumstances in which unmarried men and women may be secluded together; the wedding-day seclusion is the point at which that restriction is lifted for the couple. Its observance and legal significance vary among Jewish communities, some treating it as essential and others as customary.