Who walks down the aisle?

At every wedding we have attended, the groomsmen do double duty as ushers seating all guests in the first 25 of 30 minutes before the bride enters. The bride and groom’s relatives are seated at end of the regular guests. No special escort. Then the fathers escort their wives in before they sit down themselves. The groomsmen join the groom to enter from stage left next to the officiant. Then the bridesmaids enter with maid of honor last. Flowergirl/ring bearer if you are having them and then bride.

It’s really personal preference. This is what we will probably do:


Groom with groom’s momStep father and father of groomBride’s mom with escort (probably an uncle)Bridesmaids and groomsmenFlower girl and ring bearerBride with father of bride
That’s pretty traditional but you can change it up however you want. I’ve also seen it where the groomsmen just walk up alone and then the bridesmaids walk up individually.

I believe the order of our processional was:

- groom's parents

- bride's parents (my dad escorted my mom, then circled back to escort me)

- groomsmen

- groom

- bridesmaids

- bride + father

This very much comes down to your personal preference.

My (now) husband didn't like the idea of walking down the aisle and having all that attention on him, so our celebrant had him and his brother stand at the altar about 20 minutes before our ceremony even started - and this also gave him a chance to start speaking to some of our guests and helped him reign in any nerves.

Thereafter we had our processional as follows: flower girls and page boy together (we wanted them to go first so that if they were too slow that our bridesmaids could then speed up their walk a little bit since we had one song for our entire processional), our two bridesmaids individually, and then my parents escorting me down the aisle.

Everyone is different for me I’m having grandparents and parents walk down the aisle

We did:

Seating of groom's parent's

Seating of bride's mother

Officiant, Groom, Groomsmen (except my brother who walked me down the aisle)

Bridesmaids

Bride and escort

ETA: we chose not to have grandparents walk down the aisle because my grandmother (who at the last minute was unable to attend, due to a fall) would have had to be pushed in a wheelchair (and she's embarrassed by it), and his grandfather is essentially blind, and would have also needed help - because it was an outdoor wedding on the grass

Mine will be: groom, groomsmen, his parents, my mother and stepfather, my one bridesmaid, my MOH who is my sister accompanied by our father and then me alone

I won't write for the 5th time what the traditional processional looks like, others already did.
Ours will be way different because the 5 people who walk down are, besides the couple and the officiant are the 2 witnesses. We are not having a WP but had we had one, we would have included them, of course.
As for the parents and GP, they are not walking down because my fiancé's parents are divorced, have a partner, my fiancé doesn't want the partners to be in it. He doesn't hate them but he's not close to either of them and he was an adult when they came into the picture. His parents are fine with this or at least, they didn't throw a fit on front of us. Mine are baffled,hurt but they know the reason why we made this decision.

I’m 2 months out and planning my processional now. I’ve watched SOOOO many processionals on YouTube haha. Ppl do it so many different ways. Officiant is usually (though not always) the 1st up, since they signal the beginning of the ceremony. Sometimes parents are seated BEFORE the officiant though (meaning THEY are signal the beginning). Sometimes the groom walks in all at once w/officiant & groomsmen; sometimes they all walk in separately…& sometimes the groom is the last before the bridesmaids. There really aren’t any “rules” here.

Ours will be like this (I think):
OfficiantSeating of parents (our aisle may not be wide enough for them to walk together so it will probably be: Groom’s dad, Groom’s mom, my dad, then my mom). Groomsmen, best man, then GroomBridesmaids, MOHWe may have FH walk in 1st after seating of the parents though…still not final on that.

For mine, the groom will be escorted by both parents, then the wedding party, then my grandma who is the flower girl, and finally myself escorted by both parents.

Thank you for asking this because I've been wondering the same. After reading what everyone is doing, I think we will do:

Groom's parents

My mom escorted by my brother ( who is also our officiant)

Groom and Groomsmen (or they will already be up there)

Bridesmaids one at a time

Maid of Honor

Ring Bearers

Flower girls

Me and my father

Really the only people that walk are parents/grandparents, bridal party and bride and groom. Officiant is optional. Ours didn't walk.
We did:Groom and Best ManGroom's mother (his dad is deceased) escorted by a groomsmanBride's mother escorted by a groomsmanBridesmaids indivuallyRing bearersMaid of HonorBride with father.

Here was my procession in order:

- Our officiant

- My husband and his mother

- Junior groomsman 1, junior bridesmaid, junior groomsman 2 (the junior groomsmen were our twin nephews)

- Bridesmaids 2 thru 4 with groomsmen 2 thru 4

- Maid of honor and best man

- Ring bearers

- Flower girls

- My dad and I

As with many wedding traditions, I don't think there's any set rules of who can and can't walk down the aisle. The general rule, though, is that it's the cream of the crop among your families and guests.

We're having the groomsmen walk in from the side, the bridesmaids walk down the aisle alone, and then my groom is going to walk both my mom and his mom down the aisle to their seats up front. My dad is walking me in. We're having grandparents and his dad & step dad already be seated before the ceremony starts.

As others have shared, it's up to what the two of you prefer. Since you are planning to include your mother, it's a nice gesture to also include your future MIL in your processional.

Both of our parents have divorced, remarried, etc. and his father & grandfathers passed a few years ago and so have all of my grandparents. We also wanted to respect that his mother's escort has been influential in our lives, however they are no longer a couple. So we set the processional order as:
-Our officiant
-Seating of the mothers (escorted by the Best Man and Groomsman #2/my brother) in this order: my mother, his mother, my stepmother, his grandmother and his other grandmother who uses a wheelchair. We lined up the mothers so my brother could escort both our mom and our stepmom.

-Then the groomsmen went back to hubby and walked out with him in a single file.

-Bridesmaids, in a single file.

-Dad and me.
Note: we placed personalized reserved signs for the mother figures in a specific order on the front row and included seats for immediate family members (younger siblings, my brother's wife, MIL's escort) who were not part of the processional. It gave them peace of mind that they were also VIPs, just recognized in a different way. We made sure to plan the row of chairs so the wheelchair lined up on the end and evened out with the rest of the rows.

Also, by calling it the "seating of the mothers," it saved us from having to figure out how on earth to have the DJ introduce everyone (and their intricate titles) into the reception.