How to Decide Who Walks You Down the Aisle on Your Wedding Day When You Have Difficult Relationships with Your Family
October 9, 2026Everyone dreams of having the perfect wedding day and, believe me, nobody wants this more than your wedding planning team. Besides wanting it for our clients, it’s also a reflection of our work as well. Rarely are things 100% perfect, but I’m here to tell you today there are some things that you are expecting to be perfect on your wedding day that are rarely ever perfect no matter how awesome your event team is.
Welcome Bag Delivery
The first thing that will likely go wrong is wedding welcome bag delivery at the hotel. Sorry, hotels, but this is definitely something that gets messed up at least a little bit most of the time. Have low expectations of this. Remember that typically your wedding welcome bags are being passed out at the front desk, and the staff at front desk of a hotel changes about every four hours and is usually some of your least experienced youngest people working at the hotel. It’s very common for them to miss the little note on the reservation that says this person is part of your wedding group. Also, if they’re placing the bags in the rooms instead of giving them to guests at the front desk, one thing you may not realize is that this doesn’t typically happen until about two hours after guests check in. So if you’re expecting there to be a bag in the room when they get to their room, it’s highly unlikely because most hotels don’t assign rooms until guests have checked in. If you decide to make the bags different and by name, this is going to be so much more problematic than making them all the same. Sometimes on like a wedding welcome letter, you need to describe the rehearsal dinner for everybody and add, “By Invitation Only” so that only those people know to come to the rehearsal dinner if they don’t remember from their invitations.
Kids in the Wedding
Another thing that probably won’t go perfectly is getting kids down the aisle during ceremony. I know your Flower Girl and your Ring Bearer are super cute and, in your mind, you have this little princess and prince moment where they’re going to walk down the aisle throwing their flowers. Everybody’s going to ooh and ah at how cute they are. Hopefully this happens, but if you have in your mind that it is definitely going to go that way, you clearly have never been around children before. Little kids, even if they do great at rehearsal, when 200 people are staring at them, have a tendency to have major meltdowns, cry, go the wrong direction, dump all the flowers on the ground at the same time, refuse to walk in without a parent. Honestly, they’re so cute. It’s cute whatever they do, but if you’re the kind of couple that’s going to get super upset if that part doesn’t go exactly how you envisioned, I have bad news for you. You’re likely going to be upset on your wedding day. Don’t expect it. Just let it happen. It’s cute no matter what.
Audio-Visual Hiccups
It is unlikely you’ll be having zero audio visual problems on your wedding day. Ceremony sound, bands, DJs – all of this involves a lot of technical equipment, cabling, frequencies, wireless components, etc. Inevitably, almost always, there is a little glitch that happens with something. Not usually something huge, hopefully, but will there be perfect sound where it doesn’t dip out for a second or it doesn’t get scratchy for a second or your officiant doesn’t move around and cause interference? It happens all the time, almost always, even with the very best AV companies. Please just have low expectations that all of your sound and all of your AV is going to be 100% perfect. Hopefully it’ll be mostly perfect. That’s as good as you can really expect there.
Changing Vendor Contacts
Typically wedding planning is a 6 to 18 month process, on average 9 to 12 months. The odds that the salesperson that you started working with at your rental company, your hotel, your catering company, you name it, is going to be the exact same person that you start with and end with is unlikely. This is a pretty high turnover industry. It’s a stressful industry. It’s also an industry with a lot of lateral and upward mobility. Just because the person you’re working with at your venue, for example, changes to a different person doesn’t mean that all is lost or that it’s going to be a mess now. Typically plans are handed over pretty seamlessly, but this is another reason to have a planner. Really the planner is the one managing all of this, so it shouldn’t really matter how much changeover you have with event staff if you have a great planner managing everything. Regardless, if you expect it to have the same people you start with as that you end with, you’re going to be disappointed.
Staying Completely on Time
I know the goal is to always start everything and end everything exactly on time. I am very good at timelines. I’m very strong at keeping things on time, starting things on time, ending things on time. One of the reasons for that though is because I build buffer time in places where I know we’re likely to have delays. I had a bride once that wanted me to start the ceremony at exactly 6:13 pm. It was some luck thing I think. I was like, “Oh my God, this is not likely to happen.” But I did it. I did start at 6:13 because I’m just that good! Haha! Honestly, though, things often do get a little behind. It happens. Not always, but a lot of times. Things aren’t usually exactly on time. Usually when things run behind, it’s because the clients are asking for delays, more time to talk, more time to do this or that, need to go to the bathroom, etc. You should work with a great Planner that is going to help you create a realistic timeline with buffer time and realistic expectations to help manage this, but please get out of your mind that everything will just stay right on time to the minute because that’s not realistic with life and it’s not realistic with events either.
So things may not be 100% perfect on your event day, but I encourage you to just know that some little minor things might go wrong, but all of these things that I’m mentioning should not ruin the overall experience of your day. If you think anything that I said to you just now is going to ruin your experience on your wedding day, don’t have a wedding. I mean that sincerely. Elope, go to the justice of the peace, do something low stress for you that is going to feel perfect other than all of these factors put together that likely often will have a little hiccup that really shouldn’t be a big deal. Perfection is never promised, thought it’s always the goal, but it’s not always realistic. Just try to enjoy it the best you can!