Wedding Date- Need your advice!

Why did you originally pick that date? Does it have significant meaning to you? If not, then I'd change it..for nothing else but ease of mind.

I'm getting married two weeks before Thanksgiving this year so this was something we thought about as well. We looked at the weekend before and experienced the same thing. Would you be open to moving it up a week? We still saved a bunch for being off-season (Yay November weddings!) and didn't deal with the "Holiday Surcharge" and worry about people travelling.

Also, I had friends who got married on December 17th a few years back and it seemed to be fine. I think it just depends on how many people you know that will be travelling for the holidays and how important your current date is to you!

This is a “know your audience” situation. Do you have a lot of out of town guests? Would their jobs allow them to go? Are you going to be upset if a lot of people can’t make it? Personally, I wouldn’t be going to an OOT wedding the week before Christmas. Not only would I be tight on money, but I’m a manager in retail and there’s no way I’m getting time off the week before Christmas. So, if
you think you have a lot of guests in the same situation and you really want them there, think about maybe moving your date.

It wouldn't be an issue getting the time off for me, but if we had to travel for a wedding right before Christmas, we'd probably skip going out to FH's family for Christmas, and travelling during that time can be super pricey, especially if you don't book early. If you don't have much of a reason for picking that date and think your guests would struggle to attend, I'd consider moving it. If you don't think that will be an issue, definitely send STDs far in advance - I'd almost treat it like a destination wedding timeline-wise.

My birthday is December 20 and from my experience doing any kind of birthday event around that time is tough so I don't really bother doing anything big, just a get together with immediate family and friends. I can't even imagine a wedding. It's a tough time of year because people travel to visit family or have long standing holiday traditions, or they're already spending so much money on holiday gifts and parties, etc. that it can be financially difficult for some to attend a wedding on top of everything else. I personally would suggest changing the date but I'm biased becasue I don't really like that my birthday is so close to Christmas. Plenty of people have gotten married around that time and everything went fine. I think it's a know your crowd type of thing.

View Quoted Comment

Exactly! You need to run the date past all your VIPs and get their honest input and then really listen to them. Travel, hotels, virtually everything, is more expensive at the holidays, and as pps mentioned, lots of people can't get time off work (husband worked in a field -- NOT retail -- where all management vacation requests were blocked between mid-November until the first of the year). Others have traditional holiday events annually on a date like "the last Saturday before Christmas." Maybe with your guest list it's an ideal date, but in general I think there are a lot of people for whom your chosen date might seriously impact attendance.

I have a friend whose daughter was married the Wednesday between Christmas and New Years a few years ago, and she said, while they had a pretty good turnout, they seriously regretted it when they realized how inconvenient and expensive their guests' travel was. They felt like they were not nearly sensitive enough to how it would impact others and she still felt bad about it years later.

Our anniversary is December 8th. We chose against a December wedding due to the holidays. 95% of our guest list is out of state. We picked 8/15 instead. That happens to be my FH'S lucky number. I think depending on your guest count and how local everyone is you should be fine.

This wouldn't be an issue for me personally, but I could see it being difficult for many.

I agree with PPs. It's a busy time of year, plus any honeymoon destinations could cost more. If you really want to keep your date, you could always do a honeymoon later!

If your guest list includes many out of town guests, I would anticipate higher than normal "no" responses on RSVP. Locally, I think it's less of a big deal.

You make great points. Even a couple of weeks in either direction can make a big difference. Airline prices are very good around 2 weeks after thanksgiving/2 weeks before Christmas or after January 15.

I got married December 23, 2017 which was the Saturday before Christmas. I checked with all my VIPs and bridal party before choosing that date. For us, my husband and I really love Christmas and it had always been a dream of mine to have a Christmas wedding. No one had to fly to our wedding. We decided to have a semi-DW about 1.5-2 hours from us and all of our guests. As a sign of our love and appreciation to our guests for spending their Christmas weekend with us we paid for anyone's accommodations who wanted to spend the weekend with us. We chose this date intentionally knowing that our wedding would be intimate and cozy which is what we wanted. We had 40 guests and it couldn't have been more perfect. But this is not for everyone, especially if you want a large wedding or have a lot of guests flying or traveling long distance. If you do choose this date, you will want to send out save the dates about 8-10 months out to give your guests advance notice to plan.

Our wedding is December 13th this year, and I was definitely nervous it would be too close to Christmas! But luckily if you look at honeymoons and flights, it’s still right before the most expensive time to go on a trip. I sent out my save the dates months ago so people have plenty of time to plan ahead and figure out if they need to request any time off. So far I haven’t heard any complaints

We were originally going to get married the weekend before Thanksgiving and everyone was losing their mind over it. I told them if our guests really want to be there, they will. We ended up moving it to October but that's only because we wanted an October wedding from the start and chose a venue with our preferred date instead I think if that's what you want, definitely do it! Less people will probably show up than if you chose a different date but that actually might be better! HAHA Save some money!!

View Quoted Comment

The only people that would be flying from out of town would be my grandparents and they would come no matter what. All my other family would drive so buying airplane tickets wouldn't be a issue but we were planning on having about 300 guests I don't want to plan such a big wedding and then nobody shows up