The SO and I have been eyeing June 25, 2008 as our wedding date. It seemed like such a good date except when we looked at the calendar, we noticed that it will fall on a Wednesday. It seems like such a bad date to get married as we don’t want to inconvenience our guests by having them take a day off in the middle of the week. Has anyone run into this problem? If so, how did you handle it?
If it seems so crazy to have it in the middle of the week, we were thinking perhaps June 14 or June 28 as those dates fall on a Saturday. But it seems so wrong to change our date just because it happens to fall on a bad day of the week that year. And to answer your question, yes we most definitely want to marry in June, 2008. We’ve been keeping June 25 in mind but if it doesn’t work for our wedding, we’ll relunctantly change it. Ideas? Suggestions? Comments? Please help us!
Whatever significance it might have to you, it won’t have to anyone else, and let’s be perfectly honest; if you just move it ahead three days to Saturday, June 28, June 28 will become significant to you, and June 25 meaningless. You’ll forget about June 25 soon enough.
Yes, it would be immensely irritating to many of your guests. Absent a *real * reason to hold it on June 25, you should change it.
Why exactly did you pick that date in the first place? Most people start with the day of the week and pick a date from that, or pick a date based on what’s available with their venues. Why the 25th?
Our wedding was on a Friday – but it was also very small and we invited only people who lived close and/or were close enough to us that they would be able/willing to attend with perhaps only an hour or two “taken off” (the ceremony was at 3:30 pm).
But if you’re planning the full-blown wedding hoo-ha, you’re not going to get many attendees on a Wednesday. If you want anybody to show up, best to move the date to a Saturday.
I used to work at high-end weddings at a lovely mansion in New Orleans. I must have worked several hundred of them through college and there were 5 or so during the middle of the week. The tended to be small but I will say that wedding party didn’t have much trouble booking it during an almost impossible time of the year and the venue may give you a cheaper rate than the weekend rate. It could work if it is a very small wedding and you know all of the guests well, otherwise I say it is a bad idea.
Obviously, you’re choosing the anniversary of a great historical moment: the day I met Only Mostly Dead.
We had a similar problem when setting our wedding date for this summer. We wanted our 5-year anniversary, but that would fall on a Sunday and I really wanted an evening wedding, so it had to be Friday or Saturday.
If the date is that important to you, go to the courthouse on June 25 and get married, then have a public wedding with reception and all the following weekend. The only thing is that if you want people to recognize June 25 as your anniversary, you have to make it clear that this is what you’re doing. If you’re willing to budge, go for a date that’s close.
Wow I didn’t think that it was such a big deal! We’ve never had any experience with weddings as neither of us have been to any and none of our friends have married yet so we don’t know the wedding etiquette. The date just seemed right to us, and if it’s such a bad thing to have it in the middle of the week, I guess we’ll do what we have to!
Zsofia, I know that some people pick their dates according to what’s available, but for us, our being able to pick the date was important. We’ve always had to change plans based on other factors, other people’s demands. We wanted to be able to come up with a date that seemed right to us and we’d adjust accordingly by finding a venue that would host our small wedding on our special day. I know it seems silly, but it’s just one of those weird things about us I guess.
So which date seems better then, June 14 or June 28?
That’s a really good idea! I would really consider that, but we want our friends and family to share in on our special day (as in our getting married, not just for the party afterward), so I guess we’ll have to move it.
Well, you’ll have no trouble finding a venue for your wedding – as Shagnasty said, you’ll probably have a much better selection than you would if you got married on a weekend.
Of course if you want other people at your wedding – particularly people from out of town – having it in the middle of the week will be a problem.
Remember: When it comes to weddings, people have a strong tendency to do what “everyone else does”. I don’t think there is anything wrong etiquette-wise with choosing a mid-week date, especially if that date has significance (even if it is only symbollic of not letting yourself be pushed around). On the other hand, Saturday weddings, and to a slightly lesser extent Friday and Sunday weddings allow people with significant travel time to attend the wedding without having to take off multiple days of work–assuming a Monday through Friday work week.
Really, rather than let yourself be pushed around by a bunch of anonymous know-it-alls on a message board, I think you should consider talking to your friends and family about the date. Call your mom and say “Hey, If we decided to get married on a Wednesday, could you come?” Call your intended wedding party. Call the place you want to hold the reception. (Actually, call them first; an awful lot of people pick out such places much farther in advance than April to June,
(checks OP) . . . Oh. You are planning a wedding more than two years away. This gives you a lot more flexibility. If you send out “Save the Date” Cards far enough in advance, especially if most people are local, the midweek thing may not be a deal breaker).
I don’t know that a Wednesday date is a good idea, and I agree with the person(s) who suggest that picking a good sounding date and then looking to see what day of the week it is seems much odder than choosing the “4th Saturday in June . . . let’s see that’s the 28th?” would be.
On the other hand, people historically have not always been wed on weekends, and if you’ve got a date that you like–especially if you have a good reason for it(or at least a good explanation–“I’d like to feel that my grandfather, now deceased, is honored by the wedding to some small extent, so I’d like to get married on his birthday, which just so happens to be a Wednesday, I’m sorry if that is incovenient” NOTE: I am not recommending you create a dead grandfather to honor or otherwise lie, I’m just suggesting that people might respect that kind of logic more than “Picking a Wednesday is about putting my desires above other people’s for once in my life”.)
Yep, I think we still need a better explanation than “it seemed right to us”. Why? What factors made it seem auspicious? You sat down, picked a date out of thin air without consulting the calendar, and that’s the date you picked. But why? Does it have some significance?
If you want to get married on a Wednesday, go ahead and get married on a Wednesday. The trade-off will be that some of your guests won’t be able to make it, so you will probably have a smaller wedding than what you were originally thinking. Otherwise, I can’t see the problem. Just because it’s unconventional doesn’t mean that you can’t do it.
If you’re really, really hung up on June 25 but don’t want to get married on Wednesday, it falls on a Friday in 2010 or a Saturday in 2011 if you can wait that long…
I know a girl who got married on a Friday, and at comparitively short notice (only 7 weeks in the planning so less than that from notification of the date/time to the actual wedding). When she called to give me the date she told me she expected my husband to be there, asserting “It’s just one day. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people take the day off work”. Ummm, yeah, it was. My husband doesn’t have the sort of job where he can just take a day off willy-nilly. With a couple of extra weeks notice, maybe he could have arranged a day of annual leave for that day, but I’m quite sure he’s not the only one who can’t just drop everything and take a day off (admittedly, he may have found it easier for someone he actually likes… but it would still take some doing). Don’t be like her! If you want to get married on a day that people traditionally work on, accept that some of them will not be able to take “just that one day” off. If it’s so important to you that everyone you invite should be able to attend, then a weekday is not the greatest choice.
Oh, I didn’t want you to think I was being down on your decision, just wondering if there was some significance - somebody’s anniversary, an important date to you, etc.
But I wouldn’t get married on a Wednesday if I wanted more than immediate family there. Would be cheaper, though.
Contrary to what most folks seem to think, I don’t believe that a wedding is about the bride and groom – the marriage is about them, but the wedding is about celebrating with loved ones (and family ;)). I’ve never understood/agreed with the “it’s my special day, so I’m going to do what I want and the convenience of my guests be damned” way of thinking. (Just to be clear, I do not think this is how the OP feels, I’m just saying this is an attitude I see a lot.) If people don’t care about whether their guests can attend, they should elope.
I don’t think you have to have been to any weddings to realize that it would be hard for people to attend any event scheduled for a weekday – in the middle of the week, no less. It has nothing to do with wedding ettiquette, IMO, and everything to do with thoughtfulness and a little bit of common sense.
