Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Gingham and I had some criteria we used when picking the date:

• Had to be a time when it would not be raining so that we could get married outside
• Wouldn’t conflict with Hood To Coast or Hood To Coast training.
• Could not be on a OSU Beaver Football Saturday (home or away)

Good Weather: In Oregon, and generally anywhere in the PNW, you really can’t count on solid sunshine until after the 4th of July. And then, anytime after the 1st weekend in October you’d be pushing it. So we narrowed it down to August and September.

Hood To Coast: This is a gigantic relay every August in Oregon where teams of 12 race from Mt. Hood to Seaside. It’s crazy. And while you’re running it, you ask yourself over and over why you’re doing it, but in the end it’s all worth it. I’ve run HTC twice, Mr. Gingham has done it 6 or 7 times, and we’re both doing it again this year. HTC definitely requires training, pretty much all summer long (the race is August 28th) and we decided that we didn’t want our wedding and honeymoon to conflict with this (hmm - lounge by the pool all day or run hills for 6 miles?). So that just eliminated the entire month of August.

HTC 2009 - me handing off to Mr. Gingham

Beaver Football: Mr. Gingham is a huge fan and so are most of his friends so we did not want to pick a date that would require anyone to miss a game. This may sound silly to some, but college football (and football in general) is a big deal in the Gingham household. Mr. Gingham has maybe missed 1 game in 10 years or something crazy like that. He even lived in Florida for 3 years and flew home to go to the games. There was no way I was going to monkey with a tailgating Saturday. Mr. G was already going to have to give up a game for the honeymoon so there was no need to push the envelope. September 4th, 18th and 25th all had games so there went those options. However, September 11th was free.

Beaver Football

So - we narrowed it down to one day that met all our criteria. But was September 11th, an acceptable wedding date? To me - yes, without a doubt. But I have another reason why 9/11 is a big day for me (more on that in a sec). Going back to the issue of getting married on 9/11 - I’m very sad for those who lost their lives or lost family members and friends on this day. I also understand how it is a very tragic day for our country and that we need to be sensitive to it. But I also think that it’s been 9 years and it’s OK now to celebrate on this day. I mean, shouldn’t there be something happy to happen on September 11th? We’ve certainly gotten our fair share of strange reactions and looks when we tell people our date. It bugged us at first but now it’s no big deal. Plus, we got engaged on September 10th and were in Gearhart that evening so it was pretty cool to know that on the night of our engagement, we’d be standing in the exact same place 1 year later becoming man and wife.

Oh, and the other reason that 9/11 is a big day to me… it’s the day my little sister was born. She was born the morning of THE 9/11 (she’ll turn 9 on our wedding day) so while all this craziness was going on in the world, my little sister was entering it. It seems strange to most people that 9/11 would actually be a day of celebration, but to me and my family, it is. I don’t ever want my sister to think her birthday is not reason for a party, so getting married and sharing her day with her seems extra cool to me. In fact, I think we’re going to try to work in a birthday cake and maybe a round of Happy Birthday.

Lil’ sister Gingham (isn’t she the cutest?)

Any of you 9/11 brides (or brides who had the option of picking 9/11) have any interesting stories about why you landed on that date? I’d love to hear from some of my date twins.