He proposed, and I said yes! For the first few days I was in that happy newly-engaged fog where everyone cooed and awed, either caught up in nostalgia or thinking to the future of when they may be in this situation themselves. Sure, everyone asked the automatic question: when is the date? However, since the proposal just happened it was easy to get away with the response: we’re not sure yet.
Now the fog has cleared and it’s time to think seriously about when the date will be. Sure, next month sounds great, but there is a lot of planning that needs to be done and a money tree needs to be planted. For how long can we get away with avoiding the date question before I get raised eyebrows and questionable looks?
- Set your wedding date at least 1 year in advance.
- If you are picky for a venue or vendor you may have to book up to 2 years in advance.
The joint consensus seems to be that you should set your wedding date at least one year in advance. Depending on how particular you are for certain venues and vendors it could be set 2 years in advance. That sounds nice…but we aren’t even looking at venues yet! How can we pick a tentative wedding day?
- Do you have a favourite season or month?
- Will your wedding ceremony and/or reception be outdoors?
- What is the climate like in your area for each season?
- Try to avoid birthdays, other wedding anniversaries, and widely recognized holidays.
- Do you have a favourite number? Does this number fit in place of a month, date or year?
- Is there a date that is special to you and your fiancé?
- E.g. the date you were engaged or the date you started seeing each other.
- When can you afford to get married?
- Choosing a season and year, or month and year should be good enough for right now.
A little more research unveils the average Canadian wedding in 2010 cost just over $20,000! Since we are paying for it ourselves, we have to think about finances too. Find out who is pitching in to help you pay for the wedding, and how much you will have to pay yourselves. Many couples have a Jack and Jill (also known as a Buck and Doe) a few months before the wedding to raise money.
That gives us a good starting point, and after discussing how long it will take the money tree to grow to maturity, we know the year we would like to get married. After some more conversation about which season we’d like to wed in (avoiding family birthdays and other wedding anniversaries), we get a month to go along with the year: September 2013. Although we don’t have an exact date, and are not even close to sending out our save the date cards, friends and family who ask us “when is the big day?” will have a tentative month and year to tide them over for now. And if that isn’t good enough, they can pay for the wedding!
To have and to hold,
Elizabeth Honey
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