How did you pick your date?

Pixel'sMom

Yeah I'm having a hard time with this; how should we pick a date? Did you start with your favorite bakery or venue.? We're having a hard time picking one, we thought we could swing 10.10.10 but everyone tells us it's too soon and doesn't give us much time to plan. Any ideas, stories would be appreciated!

therickson

We picked our date after we found out what was available at our venue... We chose 7/24/10 because we wanted it to be late enough in the summer that we could (hopefully!!!) have sun... But also miss some of the hurricane season on our honeymoon! That is a year away... That should be enough time I think!

koosh ball

I figured I would never forget 7/11. Plus, the husband loves slurpees and we got to have a cake in the shape of a slurpee.

Tygirljojo

We picked 7/10/10 because A) Hopefully it'll be easy enough for FI to remember It's close to when he proposed and when we met (met 6/30, proposed 7/4) and C) weather should be good (fingers crossed!) and D) Avoid hurricane season for the HM.  If we could have done 7/11, would have, but we wanted to stick with a Saturday and the cost difference was very very small.  I say go for 10/10 if you want - like PP stated, you've got a year and that is totally doable! 

jeannigirl

It was when we meet. Went with the Venue first. Now I am finishing with meeting photographers, once the decision is made then I will talk with DJ's. You should have plenty of time to pull off your wedding. Good luck kepp us posted on all your decisions.

Pixel'sMom

Holy Prada! I didn't even think about HM yet! Wow, I'm waaaay behind on this planning. THANK YOU ALL for great feedback, will have to start planning asap!

d_smith79

I wish I had a great story behind our date. We chose it mostly because of budget. We needed time to save. February is off peak season so some vendors are less expensive. I actually liked the thought of a Winter wedding since most weddings around here are late Spring through Summer. Just something a little different.  A word of advice I would give yourself at least 6 months for planning depending on the size of your wedding. I'm planning a small wedding that is fairly simple, and I would have def'n needed 6 months.I would say figure out what is most important to you...venue, dj, photographer and maybe figure out their availability, then go from there. HTH!

niq24601

We're having a hard time picking one, we thought we could swing 10.10.10 but everyone tells us it's too soon and doesn't give us much time to plan.I agree with PPs; you've got time so long as there isn't a must-have venue that's booked already.As for us, we picked 9/25 beacuse we both wanted a fall wedding. Plus, we thought getting married "off-peak" would save some $$. On the "that's obsessive" side, we looked at the [url=http://www.met.utah.edu/jhorel/html/wx/climate/sunshine.html]percent possible sunshine data[/url] to see when we'd lose any real shot at decent weather (punchline: Mar 15-Oct 15 if you're really stretching it; Jul 1-Sep 15 if you want to play it safe).As for the money-saving, "peak" season is too long, so we just went with what we could get.

Tygirljojo

Niq - you're getting married on a great day!  It also happens to be my birthday!

LauraLynneC

we picked a date that's easy for DH to remember - his mom and I share a birthday, so that one's covered. So now we share an anniversary too!! Well, actually, we're 2 days later so his step dad and mom can give him a little notice (we nudged it to a Sunday to save money)

jennyann28

Well, first of all, we knew we wanted an outdoor wedding. That meant late-ish summer around here (also wanted summer because I am a teacher & can take the whole summer off). Second, we knew we wanted a Saturday. I was a BM in a wedding last year that was on a Sunday evening, which really wasn't cool, as i had to work the next day. We didn't want to do that to people. We kind of wanted July, because that's the month we met in. SO... when we were looking at venues, we were looking for mid to late July. The venue we settled on had the 17th or the 31st left. We took the 31st because of a greater chance of nice weather. FYI, I booked my venue in May. There are 5 Saturdays in July, and after I booked, my venue only had 1 left. So time really does factor in. 10.10.10 is a REALLY trendy date, so it will be MUCH harder for you to find top vendors at this point. I'd honestly pick a different day.

Kaye Smith

I had wanted a wedding in late August of 2010 - my favorite time of year.  We were able to get a date (8/28 - which had a nice ring!) reserved with my chapel, and then we went to look at venues.  I fell in love with the first venue we saw(Lake Union Cafe), but unfortunately, they did not have 8/28 open. So for a time, the only date that both the chapel and venue had open was 9/11 - and my mom said she wouldn't be a part of my wedding if i had it on the date (she's obviously ultra superstitious!).  We had never thought of having our wedding sooner until a friend suggested looking into it, and it's been easy since.  So basically, fate (somewhat) chose our date for us.  My advice would be if you end up falling in love with a ceremony/reception site, the date will work itself out!

cupcakepirate

With DH being in the military, things were tricky. I wanted an outdoor/garden/sunday brunch type of wedding. Or 8/8/8 since 8 is a favorite number of mine. He wanted the next time he came home. He had recently been stationed overseas (feb 08), so the earliest he could come home was Christmas time, and that trumped the summer wedding since we knew he'd be getting deployed after the first of the year. And 12/27 is my favorite nieces birthday. Didn't ever consider it being easy to remember. My birthday is Valentine's day, so he is good about not forgetting that, 2 days after Christmas can't be that hard.

cowgirl_tarr

Our date is July 10 2010 and picking our date was easy for me for a few reasons.1)It will be 11 years on  July 13 and the 10 is the closest Saturday.2) I love the date 7-10-103) We are getting married and having the reception outside so we had to try and  pick a day that would be nice with no rain

jodyplustwinsx2

FI proposed on 8/13/09. I liked the idea of a summer wedding and wanted a year'ish to plan, so that narrowed it down somewhat. June was my first thought but it was bit too much in the less than a year category and when I looked at the number of rainy days in the last 100 years, that wasn't looking good. Since I wanted an outdoor ceremony, I then looked at July. We initially chose the 24th, but our venue only had two July Saturdays left (when I looked at it the following week!)... the 3rd or the 17th. The 3rd tends to be rainy, and I didn't want to do the whole 4th of July weekend thing (plus my birthday is the 6th), so that left us with the 17th. FWIW, the only vendor that I wanted and couldn't get was the Michael Benson Band. Everyone else was starting to book up, but still available with just under a year to go. However, like pp said, 10/10/10 is super trendy so it might be an issue... or not. Besides, unless you have your heart SET on certain vendors, I'm sure you can find plenty of awesome ones. There are so many options that it's just not that tough. It's definitely plenty of time to plan IMO.

teacherpiglet

We originally wanted 9/12, but the venue was booked so we went with the next weekend which has a better ring to it, easier to remember too- 09/19/09.  It is kind of fun to say too!  Everything else just kind of fell into place.  Summer was too busy for DH and I to get married.  There were four couples in DH's family including us to get married this year, all between May and Oct.  It was kind of every other month for the family for a wedding.  It was a little crazy, seemed like we were always going to a wedding or doing stuff for our wedding the last several months.   

carrieoz_76

We wanted enough time to enjoy our engagement, and to save for the wedding and HM. We also needed to do it at a time when FI, who's back in school, could be gone for a couple weeks - which really narrowed things down. I didn't want to wait forever (i.e. 2011) So we ended up in August 2010. A year is enough time to plan a wedding. We didn't start planning until a year out.

dmw_2010

I wanted a fall wedding, but I'm starting grad school next year so we wanted to get married before that started. We wanted to avoid Labor Day weekend and 9/11 was just creepy to us. That left 9/18/10 as the one Saturday in September that we had left before school would start, except his family is Jewish and that's Yom Kippur next year so.... not so much. Which brought us to 8/28/10. If you start making calls soon and aren't fantastically picky, I think you'll be able to find vendors to make 10/10/10 work. However, you may end up booking based on who's available rather than who you really like. It's up to you how important that is in the grand scheme of things. Whatever you decide to do, good luck!

BrandyL10

I wanted to get married on our anniversary, 7.7.10, it would be three years, but that is a wednesday next year, and I wanted a Sat! So, we picked July 10th, but Photog couldn't do it, so we pushed to July 17th. And that is how we chose ours.

sarack

We wanted 7-17-10 but the first venue we looked at was booked for that date so we took the next available date. then I started booking other vendors and FI decided he didn't like the first venue any more so we switched. Kinda sad about that becasue i could have had 7-17-10 somewhere else! Our real anniversary is 7-19. So our date is 7-31-10

uwhuskygirl

I started off by saying the months I didn't want to get married in (February, June-Sept), then I knocked out the months of close friends and families birthdays or other events(April, May, Nov) then we were left with Jan, March, Oct, Dec. Then I decided I didn't want an Oct wedding. So then we were left with Jan, March or Dec. We got engaged last Oct and tried (for a week) to pull off a Dec wedding and quickly found out that wasn't going to happen. So, then we just thought that March would be good because then I'd have almost 6 months to plan. Then March 28 was the only date that our venue had left. There's nothing sentimental or memorable about our date.

KST_

I always wanted an early October wedding because that's my favorite time of year, but when time came to think about dates, I realized that stuff for us is really stacked starting in October. October is my mom's birthday and Halloween (my favorite holiday), followed by FI's birthday then Thanksgiving, my sister's birthday, Christmas, NYE, my birthday...that's a lot stacked over 3 months. Meanwhile, the rest of the year is pretty sparse with how birthdays and holidays are spread out, so I wanted to fill that in a bit better. I wanted an outdoor ceremony so that put it into summer and we wanted to save money by having the ceremony on a Sunday (and FFIL has dialysis on Saturdays). I would have gone with August, but our friend who is a photographer and lives in Hawaii is going to be on continent in June 2010 for another wedding so then she could attend/photo our wedding. The other couple was originally planning on 6/19 so we went with 6/27.

donandmelissadunning

Ours is 3/26/2011. We wanted to have our wedding with our kids (we each have exes with shared weekends) and that was the last weekend of the off peak season that we had the kids. We wanted it to be 2 years out so we could save. And we wanted the best chance possible of something colorful happening in the garden of our venue.

keithnjulie

We got engaged 11/08 and married 10/09. We initially wanted 09.26.09 but I couldn't find anything anywhere so we opted for the next weekend 10.03.09. I think it all depends on the size of your wedding. If I was you I would nail that down ASAP and go from there... It was practically impossible for me to a. find a church that would marry us since we don't belong to one, and one that would allow an outside minister (he married my parents 31 years ago) and b. find a reception venue that could hold 250-275 and allow outside catering. We found a few places but all were booked and we were so limited because of the size and my DH want to stay *local*. Long story short we booked in this order... Venue, church, photographer, DJ, Cake, etc...

Pixel'sMom

Thank you all for wonderful advice and feedback! We'll sit down and crank all this out in the next few days. We're thinking super small; 20-40 so budet shouldn't be an issue. I'll put some venues together today. THANK YOU THANK YOU!

dbraulik

A little late to the party... but.... I think 10.10.10 is totally do-able. Especially with 20-40 people. We chose our wedding because my favorite flower is Lilacs. They only bloom in May. We were kicking around 05/01 or 05/08... hadn't really decided. Then FI family calls us super excited saying they had purchased their plane tickets already and were going to be here 04/26-05/04. So that locked in the date for us!