The Last Walk I'll Take As A Single Lady

One of the things I'm really looking forward to on our wedding day is my walk down the aisle. It will be the last walk I will take as a single gal, all eyes will be on me in my beautiful dress, and I'll be walking toward my future together with my best friend, Mr. Cola.

And an important part of this walk will be having my father walk me down the aisle. I've always been a bit of a daddy's little girl, and couldn't imagine him not by my side. But there are some difficulties with this, since my dad had a stroke several years ago that left him partially disabled. A recent boards post touched on the subject of how to handle the walk down the aisle with a disabled father, so I thought I would share my plan with the hive. It will be so worth it for me to make a few changes from the traditional walk to have my dad walk with me.

Our ceremony and reception are at the same place, but the ceremony site is across a good sized meadow, which poses a bit of a problem as my father usually uses his wheelchair for long walks, but can walk short distances with his leg brace and cane. But walking this far would take him a very long time, and he is not very steady on uneven surfaces like grass.

This is a picture I took, standing at our ceremony site in the meadow, looking back toward the lodge and deck, to give you a better idea of the distance (and it's even further than it looks):


Traditionally, your father would walk out of the lodge with you, across the deck and out to the ceremony site, as in this picture:



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But to make it easier on my dad (and faster, since he does walk pretty slow), I am planning to walk out of the lodge and across the meadow by myself. My dad will be waiting at the last row of chairs for me, and I will join him at the beginning of the aisle for our walk together.

We will also be configuring the set up of the chairs to make it a shorter aisle for him to walk down, with only seven rows of chairs, eight chairs wide on either side of the aisle. Something like this mock up I did on top of a photo I took of the site:


So that takes care of the walking distance issue, the only thing left that I'm concerned about is him stepping on my dress. He even stepped on it when I was trying it on for the first time when I recently went to pick it up! (oh yeah, I haven't shown you all my dress in the real color I ordered it in! Feast your eyes on the delightful spun gold color, against the stark black of his shoe on top it!)


And just because I haven't shown these yet, here are a couple more pictures my mom took when we were picking up my dress from Bay Area Bridal. Keep in mind that it still needs alterations, and I could breathe, so the corset wasn't tied tight enough!

(this is not my veil, my mom is making me one in gold tulle to match my dress)


My dress has got a seriously long train on it. So long that my mom couldn't even get it all in the frame of the picture above, so yeah, I'm concerned about my dad stepping on it, even if we shorten the sides of the dress. A big ol' RIIIIPPPP is not what I want to hear as I'm walking down the aisle! And I really don't have a solution for this problem yet...should I maybe try to walk a half step behind him or something? I would love your suggestions if you have them!

Is anyone else terrified of getting their dress stepped on as they walk down the aisle? And are you doing anything special or different for your last walk as a single lady?