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- If you own a dog, you most likely treat it like family, and just like family, you want it at your wedding.
- A group of friends from Philadelphia, US, launched Bow Wow Weddings to assist pet owners with their weddings.
- Their services include walking dogs down the aisle as ring bearers or flower girls, taking pictures and caring for the pups after the wedding.
People who own dogs treat them like family. And in the same way that human family members play a part in weddings, pet lovers also want their pups to play a role.
A group of friends devised a solution allowing pets to attend their owners' weddings stress-free. They created a company enabling couples to have their pets assisted with getting ready for the ceremony, taking photos, and more.
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Philadelphia-based Myles Ragin and Pittsburgh-based Don Valentine are accountants and friends who met at Robert Morris University and founded their company, Bow Wow Weddings. Their company offers services that are customizable by couples.
The inspiration for their business came after they saw a post on an online wedding forum where people who were about to get married asked what they'll do with their dog on their wedding day. One of the responses they received was trying to coerce their Uber driver to take care of their pup.
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Based on the forum responses they spotted, they saw a need for a service. "Let's fill a need. We love dogs. This will get us out of accounting all the time, just crunching numbers, and it'll be something fun to do," Ragin to People.
The owners say that since they launched their business in December 2021, they have dog owners relieved. "We went to the Philadelphia Convention Center, and somebody cried in front of us because they were so happy that they could take their dog to their wedding," Ragin added.
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The services included by Bow Wow Weddings are wardrobe, grooming, getting the dogs to walk down the aisle and care while the owners are celebrating.
"I would say the most popular services for us have been ceremony assistance and photo assistance. Mainly people want their dogs in their wedding photos, whether that be before the ceremony or during cocktail hour. Then we've also done quite a few weddings where either we walked the dog down the aisle as a flower girl, ring bearer or passed the dog off to a groomsman or bridesmaid and then handled them afterwards," Valentine added.
Their services also include taking care of the dogs when the couple is away on honeymoon.
Sources: People, Bow Wow Weddings
