Wedding processional order, written from your own wedding party

Every processional chart online is a picture of someone else's wedding party: four bridesmaids, four groomsmen and two children. Yours has its own numbers, maybe two grooms, a sister who is your best person and a parent who will not walk. This guide gives the usual orders, then a way to write your own list in three decisions and work out how long the music has to play.

The usual order

This is the order most Christian and civil ceremonies in the US follow, with guests already seated. The seating comes first and has its own order, from grandparents to the mothers; our guide to ceremony seating covers who sits where and who is seated last.

1. The officiant takes their place at the front.
2. The groom and the best man come in, often from a side door, and stand at the front. The groomsmen may come in with them.
3. The attendants walk down the aisle, one at a time or in pairs.
4. The maid or matron of honor walks last of the attendants.
5. The ring bearer. The Emily Post Institute puts him after the bridesmaids and ahead of the flower girl.
6. The flower girl, who in Emily Post's words "precedes the bride down the aisle".
7. The bride, with whoever walks her down the aisle, or alone.

For the escort, Emily Post is relaxed: a bride's mother can walk her, or she can walk alone, and when there is a father and a stepfather, one can walk her halfway and the other the rest. Any of these is correct, and none needs explaining to guests.

Two other orders worth knowing

A Catholic wedding. The old Rite of Marriage set out the procession: "the ministers go first, followed by the priest, and then the bride and bridegroom", who could be escorted by their parents and the two witnesses. The current English text, the Order of Celebrating Matrimony, says only that the procession "takes place in the customary manner". The US bishops' liturgy office reads that as leaving "considerable latitude", so many parishes use the usual order above, and some still use the older one, with the couple walking in together. Ask your parish which it uses before you plan anything else.

A Jewish wedding. At a Jewish wedding, "the groom must arrive under the chuppah before the bride," as Maurice Lamm writes on Chabad.org. In most communities the groom is walked by his parents and the bride by hers, and in many the grandparents join them. In some communities both fathers walk the groom and both mothers the bride. Chabad.org also says the order of the procession "and the people chosen" are customs, not law, which leaves room to fit your families.

Write your own in three decisions

Start with a list of everyone who will walk, then make three decisions, in this order.

1. Who is already at the front? Anyone waiting at the front does not walk the aisle, and that shortens the processional. In the usual order it is the officiant, the groom and the best man. If neither of you wants to wait at the front, you both walk, one after the other or together.

2. One at a time or in pairs? Pairs halve the entrances and need equal sides, or a single at the end. One at a time looks better with an uneven wedding party, and gives each person a moment of their own. If your sides are uneven, walk one at a time, and nobody has to be paired off.

3. Who walks with each of you? For each person who walks to the front, decide their escort: a parent, two parents, someone else or no one. Ask each person you have in mind early, privately, before you write it into the list, so nobody hears about it at the rehearsal.

Two brides or two grooms have no tradition to follow, so the three decisions are the whole method. Three ways work well: you both walk in together, you each walk in with an escort one after the other, or, where the venue has two aisles, you each come down your own at the same time.

Count the entrances, then time the music

The processional music has to last as long as the walking. What sets that length is not how many people are in the wedding party but how many times someone starts down the aisle. Here is one wedding party, with four attendants on each side, a ring bearer and a flower girl, three ways:

The children count as entrances of their own, since they walk at their own pace.

At the rehearsal, time one walk from the back to the front, with the pause your coordinator or officiant wants between people. Multiply it by the entrances before the bride, and that is how long the first piece of music must play. The bride's own walk usually has a piece of its own, so give that number to your musicians or your DJ as two lengths: the wedding party, then the bride. Our guide to what a wedding DJ costs covers what the ceremony music adds to their hours.

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The recessional

The recessional is the processional reversed, and quicker. Nothing is fixed for it: the Order of Celebrating Matrimony, for one, describes no closing procession at all. The usual way out is:

1. The two of you, together.
2. The ring bearer and the flower girl, who in Emily Post's account leave together.
3. The honor attendants, as a pair.
4. The other attendants, in pairs, whether or not they walked in that way.
5. Parents and grandparents, if you want them to follow.
6. The officiant, last or out of a side door.

Then the guests follow, row by row from the front, which is when the ushers or your coordinator have a job again. Our guide to the wedding day timeline has where the ceremony sits in the rest of the day.

Writing it down for the day

The order lives in too many heads on the day: the officiant's, the coordinator's, the musicians' and the children's parents'. Write it once, as a numbered list with each person's escort and the music cue next to it, and give everyone the same copy at the rehearsal.

In Yes, I Do, the day screen holds the ceremony as a moment with its start and end time and a note for where, who and what to bring. Put the numbered order and the music cues in that note, so the two of you change one copy and your partner sees the same one on their phone or in a browser.

Questions

Sources

• The Emily Post Institute: inside weddings, the wedding party, for the ring bearer after the bridesmaids and before the flower girl, the flower girl before the bride, and the ring bearer leaving with the flower girl, read October 2026.
• The Emily Post Institute: wedding ceremony aisle walk FAQs, for a bride walking with her mother, alone, or with a father and a stepfather, read October 2026.
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Committee on Divine Worship newsletter, August 2016 (PDF), for the Rite of Marriage no. 20, the Order of Celebrating Matrimony no. 46, and the absence of a concluding procession.
• Chabad.org: the Jewish wedding processional, by Maurice Lamm, for the groom arriving under the chuppah first, both fathers and both mothers as escorts, and the order being custom rather than law.
• Chabad.org: the chupah escorts, for each of the couple walked by their own parents in most communities and grandparents joining.