Misconception: Walking Down The Aisle

Brides spend forever choosing a dress and when they have found ‘the one’, they hear “You’ll look beautiful going down the aisle!”

But they won’t.

They’ll look beautiful going up the nave.

You see, brides don’t walk down or up the aisle as they’d look pretty daft if they did.

The nave is the main route and central corridor from the west door of a church to the chancel and altar whereas the aisles are the parallel routes at the sides of a church, separated from the nave by pillars.

A quick search of church architectural floor plans illustrate this:

Image: Heart of Norfolk Churches

According to Britannica,

“The term nave derives from the Latin navis, meaning “ship,” and it has been suggested that it may have been chosen to designate the main body of the building because the ship had been adopted as a symbol of the church.”

Wedding planners, wedding magazines, wedding dress shops…in fact the whole wedding industry should ditch ‘going down the aisle’ and refer to what brides actually do….they go up the nave.