Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The When

We've talked about the what (We're getting married!), the who (Umm... me of course! And the boy too!), the where (Houmas House!), and the how is a work in progress. But that leaves us with the when.

First knowing I was going to ask people to go halfway across the country for this wedding I wanted it to be on a holiday weekend. Yes, it has some drawbacks (there's more people traveling, which means more expensive flights and less open hotel rooms), but I liked that if it was a 3-day weekend people would have more time to spend. Of course there's a lot of 3-day weekends in the year. We could easily do something around MLK Jr. day or Presidents Day, but I also wanted a wedding in the warmer months. Which left us with Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend.

At first we were of the mindset that 2012 was too soon and started looking at 2013. But Labor Day 2013 would mean we'd be married on the boy's sister anniversary. First I made sure this wouldn't be an issue with her or her husband. It wasn't an issue to them, which meant the day could still be considered. Except I still wanted to have my own special day.

Part of this stems from the fact our dating anniversary is on the boy's mother's birthday. Once I made this discovery I vowed that when we chose our wedding date we would make sure it was unique. But really did it matter if we shared an anniversary? It isn't like we'd be forced to celebrate together because we were celebrating the same day, and years down the line who else would really remember?

What seemed to help make the decision was in fact religion. I don't mean I prayed for the answer, but more that the Jewish religion frowns upon having a wedding on the date of something that's already there to celebrate. The thought is if you have 2 things to celebrate you need to celebrate them both. By having to things share a celebration it's almost lessening the event. Jews in general are about a good celebration, after all drinking wine is almost central to most of our holidays, so this really shouldn't come as a surprise.

So Memorial Day 2013 was out, which brought us to Labor Day 2013. Except then we'd be sharing our wedding date with the boy's best man's birthday. So basically I had to pick another holiday weekend, or look at 2014, or 2012. Except I didn't want another holiday weekend, and 2014 would mean almost a 3 year long engagement, so 2012 it was!

Except Memorial Day 2012, that's less than a year from now! I wasn't sure I was ready to plan a wedding in that amount of time. But adding on 3 extra months was the comfort factor I needed. Which means, gets ready Labor Day 2012, because that's when we're getting married!

How did you decide on your wedding date? Did you have any difficulty choosing?

11 comments:

  1. Hahahaha I love this. I definitely did not put this much thought into our date. I actually wanted a fall wedding, Eric and my mom did not for various reasons (it gets cold here early, it snows up north (where a lot of family would be driving from early) etc.) and I really didn't care THAT much so it was decided we'd have a summer date.

    Then I picked our venue and when we discovered every Saturday was already booked and we would have a week-day wedding I knew it would have to be July or August so kids wouldn't be in school. Eric's cousin and sister were both married in August, so July it was. 9 is my lucky number, so I picked July 9 and it just happened to fall on a Monday, which worked out perfectly because we didn't want a wedding right in the middle of the week. Voila! Haha.

    I'm SO GLAD we are doing a weekday wedding now. Our resort is going to be less busy. It's going to be more cost-effective for guests because hotels are cheaper and it's been easy to book vendors because it's not a weekend!

    Congrats on picking your date, I feel like that makes it all so much more real!!

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  2. We wanted to get married outdoors so we knew we needed a summer date. July has the least chance of rain and I picked a random weekend in July. It turned out it was our officant's son's birthday but he was cool with sharing the date.
    The bigger the group of people the higher the chance you'll pick someone's birthday or wedding.
    We planned our wedding in 13 months which I felt was just right. I did some DIY. A coworker planned her wedding in 5 months but she didn't do much herself.

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  3. Congrats on picking a date! While it may seem far off the time will fly by. I hope its not 100* in sept. I've dreamt of a winter wedding since I was little. While my mom pushed for a spring wedding, i knew the venue and church would be decorated for christmas ( so my flower budget was minimal). I needed at least a year to save up money for the wedding, so I chose the weekend after Christmas 2007. December 29th happened to be my grandparents anniversary and they were married over 50 years! So I figured that was a good sign and booked it. Plus I was able to take minimal amount of vacation hrs from work bc of the holiday pay.

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  4. Also I think it's funny that LSU games didn't figure into your date calculations. Thats what i hear from most brides in south la. If theres a game that night, be sure to have a tv tuned to the game! Some people will skip a wedding to go to the game

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  5. That is exciting! I thikn that is a good holiday weekend to get married because it's not like it's a HUGE holiday where peole have long standing plans/traditions with family, etc. I don't really love it when people get married around times like Thanksgiving, etc. But Labor Day - that is a good idea!

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  6. Too funny! We picked our wedding date because it was after Match but before we needed to move for J's residency. Romantic huh?

    A year is plenty of time to plan a wedding! You'll be so glad you decided to do that once you get into the thick of things. Everyone gets to a point where you just want to be married already! :-)

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  7. Love it! I dont remember how we chose a date. I know that we had a window of about a month to choose and I wanted to choose a weekend that would accomodate the most people. Since a lot of our friends were still in college, we chose April 26 because we knew it was before finals and everyone would still be in town but not be studying like crazy! Man that was a loooong time ago.

    Congrats on setting a date!

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  8. I don't think we put that much thought into our wedding date. We wanted a warm holiday weekend too so we picked Columbus Day! Your date sounds perfect though.

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  9. We had a ton (more than 50%) of our guests come in from out of town but didn't need to have it on a 3 day weekend. They came from far too - across country! We even had ours on a Sunday! People who love you and want to come to your wedding will make it work - I promise! I wanted ours in April or May but since some groomsmen would still be in law/grad school potentially having finals we chose June. We only got our venue if we chose a Sunday so we agreed! It was miserablly hot & humid but it worked. We got married on the 13th so we'll have an anniversary on Friday the 13th some year!

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  10. congratss!! you have timeee.... just book the photographer first :)

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  11. That's great that you were able to finally set a date! How exciting!

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