A bride is protected from 'pouring' rain, thanks to groomsmen
They say rain on your wedding day is good luck. If the old adage is true, then Marcus and Diana Joseph have a lot of luck on their side.
The couple wed on May 20 in front of 180 guests at Grant Hill Farms in Commerce, Georgia.
Although the ceremony was initially supposed to begin at 5 p.m., the couple decided to delay its start for a "few minutes" to let the rain pass, Diana Joseph, 23, told "Good Morning America." That few minutes turned into a half hour.
"Some of the groomsmen suggested that we keep it going," the bride recalled. "They said, 'Why don't we walk out with our bridesmaids? Once we all get down the aisle, we'll come back up and cover you as you walk back down.'"
Diana Joseph, who met her now-husband at a church camp despite attending the same high school, said she had wanted to wait 10 more minutes but then had to admit that "it was pouring. It wasn't just raining. It was storming."
So she agreed to the groomsmen's idea.
In a now-viral photo liked more than 600,000 times on Instagram, Marcus Joseph's groomsmen -- including his brother and friends he met in school or as an adult -- carried white umbrellas overhead while Diana Joseph made her way down the aisle with her father beside her.
"My husband’s best man, he ended up holding the back of my dress so that wouldn’t get in the water," the bride from Duluth, Georgia, said. "I was completely covered -- me and my dad."
Marcus Joseph said the moment was symbolic of how these men felt about his new wife.
"I chose each of my groomsmen -- not just because they’re my best friends," he told "GMA." "If something were to happen to me, I know that each one of the guys can be someone Diana can go to if she needs to."
He added, "In that moment, we literally saw what it meant for each of those guys to cover her. Some of the guys didn’t even care if they got wet ... They were soaked up to the ankle. They sacrificed themselves to make sure she made it to the altar dry."
After the wedding, the couple enjoyed a honeymoon cruise to Cozumel, Mexico, and are now looking forward to married life.
"We still have a lot of firsts that we haven’t experienced yet," Diana Joseph said. "There's still many things to learn from each other."
Her husband added that he's looking forward to having "somebody that I can overcome challenges with by my side. That was illustrated through our wedding."
