My fiance, DoperGuy, and I just found out we are expecting - on Christmas Eve, no less!! We just bought our first house in August and have a wedding planned for late June, so this was far from planned, though welcomed nontheless. We’ve been together for more than 6 years and engaged for just over a year.
My due date is Sept 4th, so if we go ahead with the wedding as planned, I’ll be about 7 months along.
So far, I’m leaning toward keeping things as-is, but we’re feeling pressure both ways.
So here’s what I’ve come up with so far for each side of the debate.
Pros for sticking with the date:
[ul]
[li]Plenty of time to wrap up all the little odds and ends that are left.[/li][li]I can still wear the wedding dress that I want, just modified to fit my growing belly.[/li][li]Distant family members have already made rather extensive - and expensive - plans to come out for the wedding.[/li][li]If we move the date, we’ll most likely lose several thousand dollars in deposits.[/li][li]If we move the date, we’ll most likely also lose our location which is nothing short of spectacular. We’re planning on an outdoor ceremony by a waterfall with the reception in an old refurbished mill. (I have phone calls in to check on the deposits and location.)[/li][/ul]
Pros for moving the date closer:
[ul]
[li]I have no idea how I’ll feel being that pregnant, since it’s my first.[/li][li]The stigma attached to being pregnant on my wedding day.[/li][li]I’ll be free to focus on my developing baby with the wedding out of the way.[/li][li]We can go on an actual honeymoon. I’m too scared to go anywhere far being 7 months along.[/li][li]I’ll most likely be able to enjoy the wedding more, being able to move around easier.[/li][li]The pictures will look better. (Horribly vain, I know.)[/li][li]Although we are already engaged and have a wedding planned, I just can’t get over the idea of it seeming like a “Shotgun Wedding” if we rush things.[/li][/ul]
I am utterly stuck on what to do!! What do you all think? There’s gotta be someone on these great boards who has had something similar happen or heard of something similar.
Do’h! :smack: While I guess this could fit in Cafe Society on a really big stretch, I had fully intended for it to go in IMHO. Could someone kindly report my post to a mod so that it might be moved?
Can’t help much on the rest of it, except to say “Don’t sweat the honeymoon.” You’ve been together 6 years…a trip can be any time. Save it for sometime after the tyke (Congrats, BTW!) is old enough to be left with the grand-parents for a week. That way you can both really enjoy the “alone together” time.
Funny, I am somewhat in the same situation, except slightly different and from the other side. I’m the male, so to me, it’s more of what she wants and such. Mrs. Small and I fuond out over Christmas that we would be having a child, which is wonderful, except last year we were planning the wedding for that fall (as in 2006) but we pushed it back exactly a year so we could plan better and have enough money for the wedding stuff…So our wedding would be this fall, and our child would be here in or around August. We moved the wedding up. It might seem like a “shotgun” wedding, but family knows you were planning it anyways, just changed the date. Of course, we didn’t lose any deposits and such by doing it this way, so it was almost easier…
I say stick with the date you have planned. Having been pregnant three times myself, and known lots of other pregnant women, chances are good that you’ll feel much better at 7 months than at 3 months. The first trimester is often the hardest.
As for the photos, if you have a good photographer, he (or she) should be able to “strategically” pose you guys, so you have some good portrait shots where you don’t look huge.
I agree with silenus on the honeymoon issue.
As for the stigma, the only way you can escape that is to not get married until after the baby is born, and you might really be tired then!
It’s also not going to hurt anyone or anything if you shift the focus from the developing baby to the wedding for a day or three. Just, you know, don’t get drunk at the reception or anything!
Funny, I am somewhat in the same situation, except slightly different and from the other side. I’m the male, so to me, it’s more of what she wants and such. Mrs. Small and I fuond out over Christmas that we would be having a child, which is wonderful, except last year we were planning the wedding for that fall (as in 2006) but we pushed it back exactly a year so we could plan better and have enough money for the wedding stuff…So our wedding would be this fall, and our child would be here in or around August. We moved the wedding up. It might seem like a “shotgun” wedding, but family knows you were planning it anyways, just changed the date. Of course, we didn’t lose any deposits and such by doing it this way, so it was almost easier…
I’ve been in this boat, sort of. Got engaged in April, planned the wedding for October, found out I was pregnant in June. We moved the wedding up to July - BUT we didn’t have deposits anywhere or out-of-towners coming in, either.
I’d say keep the wedding date as planned, if only because you can’t recoup the deposits. Paying AGAIN for the wedding as well as an impending addition to the family is more financial hardship than anyone needs at one time. Best wishes to you!
Being male, I wouldn’t really know - do developing babies require focus? I thought the general idea was to stay healthy & active and kinda let nature take its course.
At seven months you shouldn’t feel too terribly unweidly, so I say keep the wedding date as planned. You can have your honeymoon a few months later - when you can leave the baby with grandma and enjoy a well-earned rest! Don’t worry about the “stigma”, no one really cares any more.
Do give at least a passing thought to the worst case scenarios.
What if baby isn’t healthy (has severe birth defects of some sort)? Will you feel like celebrating knowing that your baby will not be born healthy just a couple of months post-wedding?
What if you get put on bedrest, or told you need to slow down to keep your bloodpressure down, or go into labor early?
I don’t know that the advice others are giving to leave the wedding date as-is is BAD, I just want to make sure that you’ve thought about some of the less positive possibilities.
Unless you’re inviting a bunch of nuns to the wedding, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. They’re your friends, your family, and they’ll be happy for you, both because of the wedding and the baby.
I’ll also second norinew’s comments about the first trimester being the hardest. I haven’t gone through it myself yet, but I had one pregnant friend who spent the first three months puking, and another who spent them almost comatose, falling asleep all over the place.
I see what you mean, but really, anything could go wrong at the last minute, whether she’s pregnant or not, and you just cannot plan for each and every contingency. She could push the wedding up to next month, and be put on bedrest by then. Or, well, anything. And, I’m pretty sure (though IANAL, and haven’t seen the contracts) that if dates have to be changed due to a medical emergency, most places are far more lenient about refunding deposits and such.
Congrats on the baby and impending marriage. Personally, if I were going to change the date, I’d move the wedding to AFTER the baby is born (at least a few months!) rather than moving it up. That way, you could get a chance to recover from pregnancy and the new mom adjustment before dealing with the stress of a wedding.
However, since you’ve already put down deposits and people have already made travel plans, I would probably just stick with the current date. In the long run, the marriage matters a lot more than the specifics of the wedding.
I’d have to let the ‘guests have already made plans and laid out money’ trump the other factors. But that’s just me.
On the other hand, perhaps you’re looking at this all wrong.
A wedding is a happy time. A baby is, usually, a happy time.
Have you truly explored the comedic potential of being seven months gone at your wedding? At a minimum you can have one or more male relatives standing at the altar with shotguns while another forces your fiancee up the aisle.
We’re talking pure comedy gold here. It’s an opportunity hard to pass up!
One of the big themes for wedding sermons is “we’re not here to get these two married: they already are, we’re just making it public and getting the paperwork.”
Sounds like you two are a good example Best wishes on everything and I’ll nth the notion that it’s best not to move it. I know people who were in a situation similar to yours and, since Spain has “dual weddingnality”* and they were getting a church wedding, they did the civil paperwork beforehand (in case anything untoward happened). The bash itself was left in its planned date.
Being married in a church (of any denomination) does not make you married in the eyes of the state and the other way 'round.
As your family has already made plans and spent money, I’d suggest not changing the date. But obviously, only you and your fiance can make that decision.
Personally, if I were going to change the date, I’d move the wedding to AFTER the baby is born (at least a few months!) rather than moving it up. That way, you could get a chance to recover from pregnancy and the new mom adjustment before dealing with the stress of a wedding.