Happy Thursday ELD-ers (I’m going to use that from now often, I hope it won’t annoy you too much)! I have a confession to make. Every Wednesday night, I tweet my followers and ask them what they want brides to know more about, or if they’re brides, what they want to know about. I have tons of Thursday Tips posts that I’m working on, but I feel like I need to be fired up and passionate about whatever I post on Thursday, so most of them are just draft posts, sitting and waiting to be developed. And so I ask people for what they want to know about because I want to be helping you all with my posts! So Elizabeth, thank you for tweeting me what you needed help with- this one’s for you love! :)
Photo by Ashley McCormick Photography
Choosing your wedding date. It’s one of the first things you have to do after you get engaged. But it’s a huge commitment. It’s saying that you have X number of days until you’re married. At the same time, it’s also saying you have X number of days to get tons of things done! I know some people who have put off choosing their wedding date just for the fact that they wanted to enjoy being engaged. That’s great! I encourage it- revel in your engagement! But at some point you’re going to have to choose. So here are some things that you should consider when choosing your wedding date…
– Time of year. You’ll want to consider the time of year for various reasons. Weather is a big one for people- especially here in Florida and in Southern states. Next, time of year should be considered if either of you are teachers, still in school, or have any kind of schedule restrictions (I know accountants are pretty busy during March/April). The seasons are a big one that kind of go along with the weather, but also kind of don’t. Maybe the two of you absolutely love Fall or Summer. That would definitely be something to consider.
– Meaningful dates. Yes, I know it’s cheesy, but if you can get married on your dating anniversary, wouldn’t that be nice? Just take a look at the meaningful dates on your calendar. Your anniversary, birthdays, other people’s anniversaries, graduations, existing trips, holidays, etc. Someone in your family is bound to have a 14 day cruise planned or a big conference going on or something. You’ll want to work around those to avoid future mishaps. Oh and something else that coincides with meaningful dates is whether or not you want your birthday (or someone else’s) to be near your wedding anniversary. Personally I could care less because I never do anything for my birthday, but I know some people really like their celebrations. :)
[Editor’s note: I remember that I wanted to get married in November, but the way the year panned out there weren’t enough Saturdays before Thanksgiving- or something to that effect. And then the next date I chose, my brother was going to be deployed, so we moved it up a month with the hopes he would be able to make it (turned out he was already deployed though).]
Photo by ELV photographer Jenn Hopkins Photography
– Length of your engagement. Didn’t expect to see that one didya? But it’s true- the amount of time that you want to (or don’t want) be engaged should play a part in choosing your date. So right now for instance. It’s October. If you wanted to have a winter wedding in February, you could either plan it for next year and have 4 months to plan, or plan it for 2013 and have 16 months to plan. Big difference huh? If you’re a big planner, I would suggest a long engagement. I’m not saying a wedding can be planned with short engagement- I’ve done it. Twice (for other people of course). But it’ll be a lot of stuff all at once. The length of your engagement will come into play once you decide on the time of year you want to have your wedding.
– Availability. Oh the dreaded word availability. Once you decide and evaluate the things above, don’t settle on an exact date unless you have to. Because now everything hangs in the balance of finding your venue and then it’s availability. In an effort to have the best wedding you possibly can, I suggest having a range of dates so that you can do your venue searching and choose the one that you like best. If you’re set on a specific date, your venue options are going to be more limited (especially if you’re planning with only a few months!). Also, if you already have your heart set on a photographer or any other vendor, you may have to work within their availability as well.
– Other tidbits… Okay so these things aren’t MUSTS when deciding on your wedding date, but they might help you out if you’re stuck.
-Your color palette for your wedding could coincide with a season if you really want it to, although I say that you can have whatever colors you want whenever you want. ;)
– It also helps to know what style of wedding you want to have, especially since you’ll be looking for venues!
– If there are certain types of decor elements that you know you want or a certain type of food or dessert, those might work better seasonally.
– And if you really want to get into it, if you just MUST have a certain type of flower (I’m thinking peonies) you’ll want to have your date be in their growing season. :)
All of these things are definitely good to consider when choosing your wedding date. And just remember- choose the date that feels right to you and your fiance. It’s the date that you’ll remember for the rest of your lives. :)
Brides, now I want to hear from you! Are you newly engaged and trying to decide on your wedding date? Comment on this post and maybe we can help you out! Or if you already have your wedding date, let us know what your deciding factor was!
{Don’t forget that you can see more Thursday Tips and advice posts on the ELD Wedding 101 page! And if you ever have a question, just ask me! I WANT to help you all- it’s what I do!}
Lauren
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I’m got engaged july of this year and we new we didn’t want a super long engagement. I always dreamed of getting married in late fall/early winter, but i felt like 5 months-ish was just too much pressure for me to get everything i wanted planned. That being said, i was too impatient to wait 17 months to tie the knot! So i had to sacrifice my winter wedding and went for an early spring instead (which i’m happy we did!) we were aiming for late february, but so many venues were booked. we finally found a venue we loved that had a saturday in march available – which just so happened to be our dating anniversary! we couldn’t pass it up! 8 months seemed like plenty of time to plan, however at the moment i’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with all that still needs to be done!
We had to make the decision between having a long boyf/girlfriend relationship, a long engagement or a wedding that wasn’t what we wanted. We decided to go down the long engagement route, but while we are saving I’m still looking at dates. This is so helpful!
Lauren, hello. I love your site. So beautiful & inspiring! WOW!
These are awesome tips! Such a great article! Hey I love the ELD-ers! Keep using it, it’s cute!
I think these things are so important to consider. So many brides often just think of one piece of the puzzle, but they should really think about it all!
Oh, the date. We are in the middle of figuring out all the things that come with picking a date. For us, we don’t have a choice with the date , so we’ve had to sacrifice our dream location. In the end, we’ll be married and that’s all that matters!
my husband and I were married on July 30th of 2011 and this was not our original planned date. Our families live on opposite coasts (mine in Oregon, his in Massachusetts and we live in Colorado) and we wanted as many of them to attend as possible (so school schedule and travel availability was crucial) I always wanted an outdoor reception which meant summer we planned on having it at a local park in an open air boat house. to book the location required me waiting until Nov. 1, 2010 when the parks and rec office opened 2011 reservations. We started planning prior to booking knowing we were getting married there though we hadn’t actually booked it. 1 week prior to booking the city announced they would be renovating the boat house and that they would not be taking reservations for the entire 2011 season! in this time (from March – late Oct) my cousin (who lives in OR) got engaged (we were each others MOH) and she claimed June 25. I was devastated and felt like i had to start all over. We were on a strict budget (paying the majority of it ourselves) but we looked out of the city, and I had to let go of all my ideas and found the perfect location 3 1/2 hours away from Denver in a tiny mountain town who fit our budget, didn’t have the date we wanted but it was available the following weekend – and we booked it!!
I found this to be a blessing in disguise; Things happen for a reason and having our wedding where we did in Salida, CO turned into a true Colorado weekend get away for not only us but all of our guests that even included a white water rafting trip the day after the wedding.