If you set it, they will come: 7 questions to ask before picking the wedding date #Advice#Wedding 101#save the date#wedding planning January 18 2016 | Catherine Clark bijouxandbits Save the Date Stamp from Apropos Roasters Related Post How postponing my wedding saved my marriage We were at the two-months-till-the-wedding mark, and I was losing it. I've never handled stress terribly well, and I have this nasty habit of taking... Read more A hell yes, you're engaged! The next step: when the hell will this thing happen? Setting the date sounds easy, right? If you set it, they will come. Let me tell you, it can be a little more complicated than that. Here are the questions you'll want to ask when setting the wedding date. How much time do you need to plan? Allowing for a lot of planning time can give you more options, more budget flexibility, and less upcharges for rush orders. If you're planning a lot of DIY projects, want to work around a pregnancy, a move, or a job change, give yourself a few extra months if you can. Perhaps the biggest bonus to planning the wedding as early as you can is that your chosen vendors will likely have more dates available to you. Photographers and venues often book months and months (if not years) in advance. When are your no-way dates? Depending on your career, children's school schedule, planned vacations, and other scheduling considerations, you'll likely have dates that are just out. Block those out before you start eyeballing dates. Planning a honeymoon? Related Post Budgets, compromise, and staycations: how to decide where to go on your honeymoon We've been covering all kinds of topics about honeymoons lately from saving cash to having fun, and this time around we're talking about destinations and... Read more If you're planning to honeymoon vacay anywhere near your wedding date, or just after, you'll want to think about the season and weather in your chosen destination. If your wedding date is flexible and you definitely want to take your honeymoon right away, choose your wedding date during the season you want to travel. Watch out for high seasons where travel and costs are at their highest or when weather will be at its most volatile. Who are your VIP guests? Related Post How to make your own backstage passes for your VIP wedding crew Kristen once showed you how to make a sewing pattern out of existing clothes, now she's showing you how to make backstage passes for your... Read more You may have guests who are must-haves: the people you really want to be there. Check in with them before setting the date to make sure they'll definitely be available. Are there any special dates to consider? Related Post 8 tips for scheduling a wedding around a holiday Planning your Halloween wedding, Christmas wedding, New Year's Eve wedding, Arbor Day wedding? That last one probably isn't such a big deal, but the other... Read more Your anniversary, the day you met, special dates between the two of you, and major holidays are all factors to consider when choosing the wedding date. Holidays especially add additional elements to the planning. Make sure you're aware of the major holidays, religious holidays, local event weekends, big sporting events, and other holidays or family birthdays before committing to a date. We've gone through a whole slew of pros and cons specifically for holiday weddings here. Do you have a theme? If you're planning a specific theme like Halloween, fall foliage, a movie theme (aligned with a movie release!), or a summer camp vibe, you'll probably want to let that guide your date choice. But don't worry if you go off-roading with your theme. Nobody will care if you're celebrating pink and yellow flowers in the fall. Feel free to embrace the season you choose, though! Would you consider off-peak timing? June, September, and October are usually the most popular wedding months based on weather alone, so off-season dates may save you some bucks. Consider January, March, April, and November if you're looking for a slightly better deal on your venue. Related Post OPEN THREAD: Would you have a weekday wedding? My love has his mind set on getting married on a weekday – that is, on the day of our 5 year anniversary, the 1st... Read more You could also consider a non-Saturday wedding or a off-peak daytime wedding to save even more money. Think about a 2:00 p.m. cake and punch wedding or a brunch wedding! Here are some tips for weekday weddings. More wedding date advice Is it possible to wait TOO LONG to get married? Sure, some couples wait many years (or even decades) to get married. But is there such a thing as waiting too long? Read More What dates are YOU throwing around for your wedding? Reporter Name * Reporter Email * Original text Enter the original text here. Edited text* Enter your suggested copyedit here. Notes You can add a note for the editor here. * Required information. Fix Typo Catherine Clark Catherine Clark is Offbeat Bride's Senior Editor. In her spare time she loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur baby, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com. @enidjcoleslaw @bijouxandbits @bijouxandbits PREVIOUS "EVERYONE has something they're worried about": How one photographer helps battle your wedding self-consciousness NEXT Love notes at The House of Blues: This superhero wedding is asploding our hearts Show/Hide comments [ 11 ] Something else to consider is if other friends and/or family are also getting married. (Though hubby and I didn't run into this issue ourselves, it has come up frequently here on OB) You may think even a two-month span of time between weddings can be enough, but it tends to cause stress for all involved – especially if wedding party members are shared! If your cousin set her date for June, don't choose something in the spring or summer as well. If your heart is set for a warm-weather wedding, then it may be best to hold off a year. Reply I had 8 days between me and my friends wedding. Couldn't be helped but it was weird! Reply If you are religious, check to see if there are any dates when weddings aren't allowed. Judaism has quite a few rules about when weddings are and are not allowed. This includes not overlapping with Shabbat, which nixes a Friday night or Saturday afternoon wedding, to entire weeks (in the summer) when weddings shouldn't be celebrated. It doesn't matter for everyone, but if you are working with clergy or have more observant people on your "must be present" list… add that to the list. Reply What helped us to pick a date was the fact that we wanted our reception in a specific venue, and they are popular and also have their own events. So we had to choose between mid-summer or mid-winter. Both are low seasons for this student organisation. And summer was not an option for us. So we contacted the venue last week, to ask about available Saturdays in December this year or January next year. The only date they could give us was January 14, 2017. Not perfect, since this is my fiancés birthday, but yeah, you can't have it all. But to be honest, we actually couldn't decide on a date, so when we only got ONE from the venue, it was a huge relief! So my advice is to be flexible with the dates if there are things (other than the time) that are important to you. Have a few possible options to pick from. Reply I totally recommend going off-season! We had a January wedding and actually got a few special deals from vendors for booking in the off-season. There was also basically a universal guarantee that nearly all our guests and vendors were available for our date. Plus, it was something fun to get us through the bleak days of winter. Reply a funny thing i ran into while finding a venue was the kentucky derby. you wouldnt think that was a big deal in chicago, but more then one bar that we were looking at held events every year for the derby and we would have had to do it on a different day. Reply We're going with a Sunday brunch wedding in March to save on the wedding costs (although every single week my mother emails me begging me not to get married in March, because it will likely rain. Even though the wedding is indoors. And we're in Seattle.) From the research we've done on specific wedding venues, that will save us around $3K alone. Yay! Reply hi there Reply Ours came down to the weather we wanted (cool but not freezing) to suit our theme (steampunk) in the location we planned to have it (toowoomba, qld) and then what dates the photographer had available during the month of August. In September the prices of everything go up and its harder to get venues, equipment hire, etc due to other annual events that happen during that month. I am very happy with the date(20/08/16), and its just over 1 year since the date of our engagement, 6 months to go 🙂 Reply We got married on our anniversary. It was always something I wnted to do, and it happened to be on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend tht year, so it was convenient (no one had to work the next day), cheaper (Sundays are less than Saturdays, even if we weren't quite off-season), and the weather was PERFECT. I was willing to compromise if we had trouble finding a venue, but being outside in early spring was very important to me. Reply I am also looking at getting married in Toowoomba QLD or nearby and would love any advice you have about local vendors? I just got engaged and I am a little overwhelmed with the beginning of planning. Reply Join the conversation Cancel Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Sign me up for your offbeat awesomeness newsletter! No-drama comment policy Part of what makes the Offbeat Empire different is our commitment to civil, constructive commenting. Make sure you're familiar with our no-drama comment policy. Biz owners & wedding bloggers Please just use your real name in your comment, not your business name or blog title. Our comments are not the place to pimp your website. If you want to promote your stuff on Offbeat Bride, join us as an advertiser instead.
Something else to consider is if other friends and/or family are also getting married. (Though hubby and I didn't run into this issue ourselves, it has come up frequently here on OB) You may think even a two-month span of time between weddings can be enough, but it tends to cause stress for all involved – especially if wedding party members are shared! If your cousin set her date for June, don't choose something in the spring or summer as well. If your heart is set for a warm-weather wedding, then it may be best to hold off a year. Reply
If you are religious, check to see if there are any dates when weddings aren't allowed. Judaism has quite a few rules about when weddings are and are not allowed. This includes not overlapping with Shabbat, which nixes a Friday night or Saturday afternoon wedding, to entire weeks (in the summer) when weddings shouldn't be celebrated. It doesn't matter for everyone, but if you are working with clergy or have more observant people on your "must be present" list… add that to the list. Reply
What helped us to pick a date was the fact that we wanted our reception in a specific venue, and they are popular and also have their own events. So we had to choose between mid-summer or mid-winter. Both are low seasons for this student organisation. And summer was not an option for us. So we contacted the venue last week, to ask about available Saturdays in December this year or January next year. The only date they could give us was January 14, 2017. Not perfect, since this is my fiancés birthday, but yeah, you can't have it all. But to be honest, we actually couldn't decide on a date, so when we only got ONE from the venue, it was a huge relief! So my advice is to be flexible with the dates if there are things (other than the time) that are important to you. Have a few possible options to pick from. Reply
I totally recommend going off-season! We had a January wedding and actually got a few special deals from vendors for booking in the off-season. There was also basically a universal guarantee that nearly all our guests and vendors were available for our date. Plus, it was something fun to get us through the bleak days of winter. Reply
a funny thing i ran into while finding a venue was the kentucky derby. you wouldnt think that was a big deal in chicago, but more then one bar that we were looking at held events every year for the derby and we would have had to do it on a different day. Reply
We're going with a Sunday brunch wedding in March to save on the wedding costs (although every single week my mother emails me begging me not to get married in March, because it will likely rain. Even though the wedding is indoors. And we're in Seattle.) From the research we've done on specific wedding venues, that will save us around $3K alone. Yay! Reply
Ours came down to the weather we wanted (cool but not freezing) to suit our theme (steampunk) in the location we planned to have it (toowoomba, qld) and then what dates the photographer had available during the month of August. In September the prices of everything go up and its harder to get venues, equipment hire, etc due to other annual events that happen during that month. I am very happy with the date(20/08/16), and its just over 1 year since the date of our engagement, 6 months to go 🙂 Reply
We got married on our anniversary. It was always something I wnted to do, and it happened to be on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend tht year, so it was convenient (no one had to work the next day), cheaper (Sundays are less than Saturdays, even if we weren't quite off-season), and the weather was PERFECT. I was willing to compromise if we had trouble finding a venue, but being outside in early spring was very important to me. Reply
I am also looking at getting married in Toowoomba QLD or nearby and would love any advice you have about local vendors? I just got engaged and I am a little overwhelmed with the beginning of planning. Reply