Welcome to another guest post written by Kayla’s husband, Daniel!
I was recently watching Brooklyn 99 with a friend and we got to the episode in which Boyle is handing out his STD’s.
This got me thinking about the most important things to consider when picking the date. When you get engaged almost everyone immediately asks, “when is the big day?” If you don’t have a date picked yet, it can start grinding your gears.
So I came up with a quick list of things to consider when choosing your big day. Hopefully it will help so your family can finally stop asking about the date and maybe leave you alone or switch to asking whether you’ve picked a dress, or a venue, or a honeymoon destination.
1. Practicality
One of the most important factors is whether or not it will actually work as a good date for everyone you want to invite. This is supposed to be your day, but the idea is to share it with others, so you’ll need to make sure other people can come.
For example, Kayla and I wanted to invite a bunch of our college friends as well as our families. Both of our families live in town, and I had friends who were going to return home right after graduation. So one of the reasons we picked our date was that it was only a week after graduation, and so the majority of our friends were still in town and able to come.
Another big thing to consider under practicality is whether you have competition. If it’s during your cousins’s family reunion, a Husker game, or some other big event, it is best to avoid that date so you don’t create awkward situations for your guests.
So aim for a date that is convenient for most of your guests. Unless you need to accommodate an important guest, then you should move it.
2. Relationship
Another important factor is the relationship significance of the date. True, marriage is significant in itself, and maybe as a couple you want to establish a new date. However, I think it’s important and interesting to tie the date into a relationally significant moment. It makes the day the much more special, even if it is a little less practical.
For us, we picked the month that we had started dating. So May could always be our special month. We couldn’t get our exact dating anniversary date due to how calendars work and our reluctance to have a Thursday wedding. However, now we will have been together for another year right before having been married for another year. Nine years together and one year married! Woo!
But it doesn’t have to just be your anniversary as a couple. It could be your first kiss, your first dance, when you first met, or even when you first knew you loved your partner.
It’s cool when your date means something to just the two of you.
3. Personal
So what happens if you have plenty of dates that work for all of your guests and no real relationship significant dates that you want to use? That’s when you start looking at personal considerations. This is different from relationship-related considerations because this could be a thing that is only important to one person of the couple (barring the whole “what’s important for them is important for me” idea). This is where things like the bride having always imagined being married in the spring or the fact that the colors are more of a fall tone comes in. While these are still important, they’re not as mission-critical as having guests or factoring in your relationship.
Kayla and I were married the day before my parent’s wedding anniversary. While that’s cool for me, it wasn’t as important for Kayla (not that she didn’t like it). But my parents and family were all really happy about it. Picking days with family significance or in accordance with traditions fall under this category as well. Even favorite holidays work, though it’s best to avoid holidays directly.
Taking all these factors into account, we picked our date and got to enjoy Memorial Day Weekend for our wedding, which gave all our guests an extra cool-down day before returning to real life. Bonus: It also gave us an extra day to pack for the honeymoon.
Remember, get everyone there and make sure you don’t have any conflicts, but try to make it mean something to the both of you, or one of you, if you want to. Good luck, and have fun with your STD’s!