Pets in wedding!

I attended a wedding where the bride's dog was the ring bearer. The dog was super social and excited to have so many people around so he was very hyper and jumpy on guests prior to the ceremony. Afterwards the bride had a pet sitter take him back home.

Also, another option, they incorporated their dog into the cake topper (a silhouette of the three of them) and had a few other details in the wedding that included the dog. Different pictures of the 3 at each table, the dog "signed" the guest book (paw print), things like that. If you decide not to have your pets at the wedding these might be options for you to consider.

We have gone back and forth about having our dog be part of the ceremony and ultimately I think we are going to go for it. She can only be part of the ceremony though, so she has to go back home after. We do have pet chauffeurs in our area, so we are going to hire one of them to bring her to the venue, then take her home and make sure she's fed and has a chance to go to the bathroom before being on her own. Since you don't have the chaperone option, could you possibly hire a dog walker or dog sitter? A lot of people who offer those services might not mind traveling with the pets!

As much as we LOVE our three dogs, we ultimately decided to leave them home. Our venue requires that dogs be in a kennel if they’re not being directly supervised at all times, so it would mean either having them in a kennel during the reception, or having someone responsible for handling them (be it paying someone OR inconveniencing a guest with them). As cute as it would be to have them walk down the aisle, I feel like it’s a lot of stress and potential expense so we’re skipping it. Plus two of our three are very big, very excitable young dogs so they probably would be like bulls in a China shop lol.


We’re doing a custom cake topper to look like them, and having cute cartoon drawings of them printed onto favor bags. We’re also going to use them to name our signature cocktails. So we’ll still incorporate them, just without them physically being there.
I think ultimately it comes down to the details of who will be taking care of them, your venue’s rules, and your pet’s personalities! Also keep in mind some of your guests may not like pets (a cousin of mine is extremely afraid of dogs) so it is just something you have to weigh for yourself

We took photos with our dogs, but did not include them in the ceremony. My parents brought them to us for photos, after our first look, and then took them back to our cabin afterwards. They are some of my favorite pictures from our day .

We decided against having them there for the ceremony for a couple of reasons. 1- overstimulation! You never know how your pets will act when they are walking down an aisle with tons of people (100 in our case) starring at them. 2- it was just too much of a hassle. Having to find someone to take care of them during the ceremony and receptions was just more than we wanted to deal with.

FH and I have a cat and would absolutely love to have him present. However, he's.... not great with people who aren't HIS people. He's gets scared and overwhelmed pretty easily. Heck, we sometimes call him Skitty because he tends to be pretty skittish around new things. So we'll be leaving him at home. Our cake topper will incorporate him, though.

I'm getting married at a zoo, so there will be plenty of animals there, but we're really trying to figure out a way for our two dogs to walk down the aisle with us (if they both make it to then, my boy is getting up in age). The venue is about a 45 minute drive from our home, and my dog cannot be kenneled unless he's sedated, so a pet sitter may be in our future!

You could check with local doggie day cares and see if any of their staff do pet sitting. My sister works for one in my area and their staff moonlights for weird stuff like this all the time.