The answer to this question comes at the beginning of Act IV, Scene 1, when Paris is speaking to Friar Laurence in his cell. After the Friar speaks of his distaste for Paris’s hasty marriage to Juliet, concerned because Paris does “not know the lady’s mind,” Paris gives as reason:
Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death,
And therefore have I little talk'd of love;
For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.
Now, sir, her father...
...hastes our marriage,
To stop the inundation of her tears
He has not spoken to Juliet of his love because she has been in mourning after Tybalt’s death (although she secretly weeps as much for Romeo’s banishment as for the death of her cousin), and it would be improper to bring up the subject during such a time. Despite this lack of communication, Juliet’s father has scheduled their marriage for that very same week, in order to, by a union of love, stem the flow of his daughter’s tears. Thus they will be married despite Paris’s lack of courtship, in order to lessen the pain of the tragedy that has fallen upon the family. Of course, little could they know that a greater tragedy is yet to come, stemming from these very same actions.
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