The Ultimate Face-to-Face Meeting

This weekend I had the pleasure of being an SOB. No, not that kind of SOB. Not even Liz Strauss’s Successful and Outstanding Blogger” SOB. Instead, I’m talking about being the Sister Of the Bride. My younger sister, Deborah, got married in Charleston, South Carolina, and it was amazing. She was beautiful, her new husband Dan is a great guy, and the entire family was there.

It occurred to me that a wedding is the end-all-be-all face-to-face meeting.
It sounds crazy, but in this world of virtual meetings, and live streaming, there are a million ways to “be there” without really being there. And it will never be the same.

Can you imagine the concept of a “virtual wedding”? I mean, really, would it ever be the same if the bride and groom were both on ichat when they said “I DO”? The very thought seems absurd. Instead, they stand face-to-face, hand-in-hand, and promise to love each other in sickness and in health, until death does them part.

There will be hundreds of pictures, an amazing video (thanks to my talented biz partner at CNTV!), and stories to tell, but they will never replace the experience for the bride and groom of being face-to-face. The pictures and videos also won’t replace the experience for those of us who watched it happen.

Being there meant that I heard the quiver in my sister’s voice when she said her vows. I watched as my Grandmother met her newest great-granddaughter for the first time. I felt my eyes well up as I watched my father dance with my sister.

While there are dozens of ways to share that moment, you can’t truly experience it without being there in person. The same is true for meetings of all kinds. We can tweet, post videos on Facebook, even create virtual meetings, and there is value to all of that.

But those things will never replace the face-to-face meeting, and the relationships that are formed when two people interact in real life. The next time someone asks me if I value the face-to-face meeting, I will answer with a resounding: I DO.