Prepare to fall in love with our selection of beautiful wedding aisle inspiration! The aisle is one of the most important details of your wedding ceremony decor, not least because the bride has to make her way down it toward the altar and, traditionally, it’s the first place her partner sees her. Because the aisle is such a huge component, many couples put a lot of thought into how to decorate it from the aisle runner to the venue itself.
You can make some beautiful DIY additions to your wedding aisle too—check out our rustic glam ferns-and-chandeliers overhang for a lovely addition to your wedding ceremony.
Featured above: Modern Fairytale Wedding Theme
Wedding Aisle Inspiration: Setting
The backdrop to your wedding can make a huge impact on the aisle you want. For example, whether your wedding ceremony is happening indoors or outdoors can determine what material your aisle runner (if you choose to have one) can be made out of. Will it be waterproof and stain resistant in case of wet grass? Will it blow away in a gust of wind and need to be secured? Your venue will also determine how long your aisle can be, and can even help to inform what theme you would like it to follow. Take this rustic/woodland wedding ceremony below, complete with a burlap aisle runner and a rose alternative unity ceremony using sunflowers.
Featured above: Personalised Burlap Aisle Runner with Equestrian Monogram
For an indoor wedding you’ll find that many venues have special function rooms that make setting up your wedding ceremony very easy, and some come as rather blank slates that you can decorate to your heart’s content with your own wedding chairs, flowers, etc. We love the below wedding aisle inspiration from Bijou Wedding Venues!
Featured above: Silchester House by Bijou Wedding Venues
Some function rooms have incredibly stylish details too, such as the high staircase at the back of Botley Mansion’s stunning glass-ceiling function room from Bijou Wedding Venues. The hanging chandeliers are mesmerising too!
Featured above: Botleys Mansion by Bijou Wedding Venues
And some venues speak for themselves so that you’ll find you don’t need to do much to transform the empty room into an album-worthy backdrop. We love this barn wedding aisle at Cripps Barn—the stone walls, the flagstone floors, the exposed beams, and the great wooden door are striking enough on their own but are taken to another level with the simple wooden chairs tied with bunches of flowers and the stunning wreaths hanging overhead. It’s certainly one of our favourite examples of wedding aisle inspiration!
Featured above: Cripps Barn by Adam Drake Photography
The same goes for these stunning function rooms from Bijou Wedding Venues—The Monks’ Refectory at Notley Abbey boasts stone walls and exposed beams, bright glass windows, and hanging chandeliers (and we especially love how this wedding aisle was styled with clear chairs and pink blossoms).
Featured above: Notley Abbey by Bijou Wedding Venues
And the Music Room at Cain Manor is breathtakingly beautiful with its dramatic wooden architecture and bright windows, the plain white aisle runner lined with baby’s breath (gypsophila), the aisle-side chairs tied with bunches of baby’s breath, and the wooden beams wrapped in white-and-green garlands.
Featured above: Cain Manor by Bijou Wedding Venues
And just look at this magnificent, long wedding aisle at the Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen. A larger venue definitely makes for a very grand wedding aisle, and this soaring ceiling and the altogether hypnotising architecture makes one breathtaking wedding aisle that needs very little, if any, further decoration.
Featured above: Grundtvig’s Church via Tinggly Gift Experiences
For the same reasons, we love the idea of a greenhouse wedding venue such as Kew Gardens for the lovely light-filled room.
On the flip-side, smaller and shorter wedding aisles such as those at intimate weddings are no less beautiful, as proven by this charming winter-inspired wedding aisle complete with a personalised backdrop and industrial style buckets filled with silver-green florals.
Featured above: Bistro Bliss Personalised Backdrop and Galvanized Flower Market Buckets
Wedding Aisle Inspiration: Aisle Runners
You’ll most likely want to personalise your wedding ceremony venue, and the wedding aisle is one of the easiest ways to do so. Confetti’s range of beautiful wedding aisle runners include plain runners and decorative runners in an array of different designs that can be personalised with names, dates, initials, and often colour schemes too.
This “Contemporary Vintage” personalised aisle runner can be stylishly personalised with the couple’s names with an underlaid decorative monogram initial.
Our “Glitz and Glam” aisle runner is a very modern design with the lovely script initial above the couple’s names and a simple bow.
This “Modern Fairy Tale” aisle runner is especially romantic with its “Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale” script.
We particularly love this “Monogram Simplicity” aisle runner too, and we think it looks especially fantastic as part of this stepped/tiered wedding aisle.
Our range of aisle runners also includes striking designs with themed imagery from “Greenery” to “Travel”.
Featured above: Greenery and Vintage Travel Hot Air Balloon Personalised Aisle Runner
You could even get creative with a stunning, colourful aisle made from scattered flower petals!
Featured above: Boston Surprise Proposal, featuring a Petal Carpet Entrance by Nectar
Wedding Aisle Inspiration: Decor
Even with a decorative aisle runner your aisle may look a little bit plain. That’s where decorations come in, such as aisle markers like the below silver lantern on a shepherd’s-crook-style hook, in a plant pot, and finished with flowers and floating candles in glass candle holders.
Aisle markers are exactly what they say on the tin and can also involve decorating the end chair right next to your aisle, or the end of the pew, etc, even if it’s just with a pretty flower arrangement like this miniature pail filled with flowers from Jessica and Ed’s Wedding at Clevedon Hall.
Some couples decorate the back row of seats at their ceremony as well, shown below in our beautiful contemporary vintage wedding theme and our pearls-and-lace aisle markers DIY.
Other wedding aisle decor ideas include decorative vases and/or candles laid on the floor on either side of the aisle, like this industrial wedding theme.
Or just a simple scattering of flower petals like here at Bijou Wedding Venues’ Notley Abbey.
But we particularly love the very simple but very effective alternative below—just two lines of mini lanterns along the grass. It would look magical when night falls!
Plus some couples choose to add small wedding favours to guests’ chairs for the wedding ceremony. Sometimes a box filled with celebratory wedding confetti, and other times a personalised hand fan for those hot summer days.
And lastly, your wedding aisle isn’t complete without the guest seating. Why have a traditional straight aisle when you can have a spiral or even horseshoe shaped aisle? Don’t miss our pick of some of the most creative and unique wedding ceremony seating ideas for even more wedding aisle inspiration!
