How to Include Your Dog in Your Wedding

Here are two things I can assume: if you’re reading this, you probably really love your dogs and/or are recently engaged. Either way, congratulations! I’m here to give you the best tips and advice on how to include your dog in your wedding, from someone who got married just over a year ago!

Planning a wedding is both extremely exciting and very stressful. You’ve got yourself to think about, your partner, your guests, the food, the music, the venue… the list goes on. Not to mention the fact that you’re trying to include your dog in your wedding, but you can’t explain to them what’s going on. So, without further ado:

How to To Include Your Dog(s) in Your Wedding

There are various ways to include your dog in your wedding: whether they are actually present in the ceremony, make a guest appearance for pictures, or are simply there in spirit via decorations or more. I’ll be outlining what I did in my own wedding, plus other ideas I had for that special day.

Let’s Start with the Ceremony

I knew that we needed to have our three dogs in our ceremony, no questions asked. But how to successfully do it was the question. Here’s a step-by-step of what we did:

1. When looking at venues, ask if dogs are allowed and if there are any extra fees or rules that apply to them.
2. Once you’re touring venues, make sure that your dog would feel comfortable in that specific location. (Is the aisle super narrow? What about nearby grass for them to potty? Is there a lot of traffic near the venue that could distract them/scare them before the ceremony starts?)
3. Now that you’ve chosen a venue, you’ve gotta think about how you want them to participate. Here are some options:
   • They can walk down the aisle with your wedding party. This is what we did, having each dog walk down with a couple. It worked out perfectly because we only had three pairs in our wedding party and three dogs.
   • If you only have one dog (and you trust them not to eat the ring), they could be your ring bearer!
   • You can have them sit as guests with a trusted handler just so they can be there for your special day.
4. Find a handler! I promise you, you will want someone other than yourself to have to worry about your dogs during your wedding.
   • We had a little entourage for our dogs: my in-laws were in charge of bringing them to the venue. A close friend of ours that we knew the dogs to be comfortable with/trust him to watch them was in charge of keeping them in check for the actual ceremony. And my brother-in-law was in charge of taking them home after the ceremony (more on that later).

Whatever you do, assign a dog handler!

Okay, let’s talk a bit about a “handler”. I 100% recommend tasking someone you trust with being in charge of your dogs throughout the wedding. You can split it up between people like we did, or find one person to watch them from start to finish. It’s your wedding day, your friends will be more than happy to help you!

If you don’t want to ask anyone close to you, there are a few companies that have professional dog “attendants” that come out and take care of your dog(s) on your wedding day! The Pet Gal is in Texas but willing to travel, and Furever and Fur Always is in the North East!

Side note: just because they are dogs doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be stylish on your wedding day! Our dogs were fully decked out for the occasion: I made them floral leashes for when they walked down the aisle, and my mom made the boys a little bowtie collar and Brooklyn a “pearl” necklace. It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!

So, now that you’ve got a few options on how to include them in the ceremony, let’s move on to the pictures:

Dogs in Wedding Pictures

My first and most important tip is to make sure your photographer is not only comfortable around dogs, but also has some experience photographing them! It will be completely useless to have your dogs in your perfect wedding pictures, if your photographer can’t/doesn’t know how to capture their attention.

Here are some questions you should ask your photographer:

• Are you comfortable around dogs?
• Have you ever photographer dogs?
• Have you ever photographed dogs in weddings?
• What are you able to do to get my dogs attention for pictures?
• Are you comfortable carrying treats/squeaker toy?

Lastly, you should head to Pinterest (as if you haven’t been living there during your entire wedding planning process) and find pictures of dogs in weddings that you love. Create a separate folder for them and start gathering inspo pics for you to share with your photographer later! The more direction you give your photographer, the happier you’ll be with the results, I promise.

We used Christin and Chris, a husband and wife duo that was absolutely incredible! If you’re in Austin and looking for a photographer, we highly recommend them!

The Reception

Okay, now to the part that you’ve all been waiting for: the party AKA reception!

Here’s my first word of advice: don’t bring your dogs to your reception. At least not for the entire thing. Why? Well, in most cases, the reception is the time where everyone can let loose. If your wedding is anything like mine, there will be a lot of drinking, a lot of dancing, and a lot of loud, boisterous and excited people.

We actually got married at one of our favorite dog-friendly spots in Austin (which has since closed and my heart breaks every time I think about it). But we chose to not have them with us simply because we didn’t think it was fair to them to throw them in that environment.

But, just because I’m saying not to bring your dogs to your wedding reception doesn’t mean I don’t want them to be there in other ways! Us? Our dogs were our specialty cocktails!

My maid of honor and I made these ourselves, with the help of her trusty Cricut and Target. But, there are various options Etsy sellers who can make something similar.

If you don’t want them to be the actual drinks, you can feature them on the cocktail napkins! This is the Etsy company we were thinking about using:

Other fun ways to include your dogs in your wedding reception include:

• Getting a cardboard cutout of them to use at the photo-booth!
• Having a dog-treat station as part of your favors so that guests with dogs can take some goodies back to their pups!
• Include them in your guest book! Whether you’re doing a traditional book, a poster for guests to sign, or something different, consider adding your pups to the illustration.

All in all…

There are soo many ways to include your dogs in your wedding, and if you love your dogs, I promise it is sooo worth it to have them there on your special day!

Hopefully this little guide have you some tips and tricks for including your dog in your wedding, but most importantly, I hope it gives you a little peace of mind about having your best four-legged friends by your side on one of the most special days of your life!

If you have any other questions about our experience including our dogs in our wedding, as always feel free to reach out! I’d love to chat with you 🙂

Cheers,
Melanie