Weddingbee Blog

No, no. I am not going to write a review of that incredibly awful movie with Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney (or was it Dylan McDermott… I always get those two confused, sort of like Tai Chi and Chai Tea….), in response to Robyn’s comment in the Diversity post I thought I would write a little sumpin’ sumpin’ about the start of my wedding planning experience, beginning with how we chose our wedding date.For Mr. Pumpkin and I this was a pretty easy decision due to the circumstances that we were in at the time. As I mentioned in the post on how Mr. Pumpkin proposed, we have been dating since we were 15 years old and so we always knew we would get married, it was simply a question of when. When I applied to law school we knew we would be putting off getting married for another 3 years. So, last spring when we could see the light at the end of the tunnel and we finally knew where I would be articling after I graduated, we started to really talk about planning the wedding.

Mr. Pumpkin’s favorite number is 8 and when we originally talked about what kind of wedding we wanted, we both agreed that we wanted a small intimate Friday night affair. So we looked it up and 08/08/08 was perfect. I thought that we were settled on that until Mr. Pumpkin surprised me with the proposal a whole year early!

After the proposal I started to think about the planning and whether I wanted to try to plan a wedding from a whole different province, or just a different city. The wedding was going to be in Regina for sure so we could either plan it for summer 2007 while we were living in Saskatoon (only 2.5 hours away) or for 08/08/08 while we were living in Red Deer (9 hours away). Mr. Pumpkin finally agreed to give up his 08/08/08 dream in favour of my sanity and so we at least had it narrowed down to the year.

After that it got really easy. Mr. Pumpkin is a farmer, this meant that May was out because of seeding. At the time, I had committed to start articling in Red Deer on July 1st and so that meant that the wedding needed to be in June. We then ruled out the first weekend in case seeding went long, and the last weekend so that we could move to Red Deer. Once we talked to our parents we found out that another family friend had already “claimed” June 23rd and TA DA! we had our date - June 16th, 2007.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I think that important factors to consider when choosing your wedding date are:

- Special dates that hold significance to you, individually or as a couple, or your families. I have heard of couples choosing to marry on the same date as the anniversary of either their parents of grandparents weddings or in memory of a loved one on their birthday (Miss Kiwi - I’m looking in your direction here!). I think that these kinds of connections to your wedding are wonderful and if everything else falls into place, this would add a really nice feeling to the whole planning process, not just the day itself. It may help you to really focus on what is important by bringing it all back to family, and add some spirituality to the day.

- Circumstances and Convenience. This might mean circumstances surrounding your life at the moment, what your life may be like around the dates that you are considering, how much time you will have to plan in the time between now and your wedding date, etc. Or, it might mean planning the wedding on a particular weekend for the convenience of your guests. This was the reason that we eventually had to scrap the Friday night idea - almost all of our guests are traveling to come to our wedding and we didn’t want them to have to take off work to come, or consequently miss the wedding because they couldn’t take off work, so that meant that we needed to move it to Saturday afternoon. I know some people who love weddings on long weekends and some people who resent weddings on long weekends. Sometimes you can also plan so that you can offer your guests some value added benefits to the trip by scheduling the wedding inconjunction with another event in your city. You can never please everyone, but also try to keep in mind what your guests may have to go through to get to the wedding and what they may be giving up to come. You should always go with the option that makes the most sense for you and your FI, you family, friends and guests.

- You may also want to consider the ease of which you will be able to book the vendors you want and the kind of wedding you want to have. Obviously if you have always envisioned yourself walking down the aisle in a snow white dress with a fur (faux, of course!) cape and a muff then you will not likely choose a date in June. If you have your heart set of a particular type of flower, check to see when that flower blooms so that you won’t have to pay out of season prices for it. If you know exactly where you want to get married, check what dates are open and plan to have your wedding when the venue is available.

- Talk to friends and family to make sure that there are not any pre-existing conflicts with your proposed dates. You will want to make sure that the people most important to you will be there to celebrate with you! If the date is somewhat unique for some reason (07/07/07 for example) you may want to avoid it because the whole world will be buzzing with weddings and you wouldn’t want to make your guests choose between your wedding and any others that they may be invited to on the same date. On the other hand, a date like that can add built in themes and ease to your planning. Also, what husband is going to forget his anniversary when it is a date as easy to remember as that!

So there you go! For what it is worth, you now have Miss Pumpkin’s take on Wedding date decisions. I hope that helps! For my next old school post I think I will discuss budget negotiations so stay tuned!