HitchDied

July, She Will Fly

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Last weekend we found out that the date we’d put on hold at our venue doesn’t work for Collin’s brother and sister-in-law (they are both in their residencies and need more notice to secure time off).   We need to get married no earlier than July 1, 2011.  This made me cry like a kid whose ice cream scoop just fell on the dirt, mainly because I kept thinking, “I thought I was going to be married in a year, and I’m not.”

And I worried about my elderly and sick relatives dying in the interim, because I worry more than is healthy about that sort of thing.  Then I realized that even if we got married next weekend I couldn’t control for that, which made me cry more, but still helped me move on.

And I worried that our venue wouldn’t have any availability in July, but right now every Saturday is open.  Which is a huge relief and I think has closed the book on me mourning a May wedding.

Now I have to think about the bright side of being married in July.  Which includes thinking about the bad things about our old date that now are irrelevant.

  • I don’t have to worry about “rueing the day.”  Although I just looked it up and the same poem implies marrying in July will make us poor.  Stupid poem!
  • The day after our old date was Mother’s Day, so we won’t inconvenience people who want to spend that weekend with their moms.
  • The weather really sucked this last May.  July is sunnier, right?  [If you are a meteorologist and want to tell me I am wrong, thank you, but I'd rather stay ignorant about this for now.]  And there’s also the fact that it is pretty uniformly hot in July, and my friends, while I love them very much, are a bunch of whiners when it comes to heat.  Maybe weather isn’t an awesome selling point.
  • I don’t have to worry about combination birthday and anniversary gifts from Collin. I never did worry about that, but, well, I need bullets here, people.
  • I have more time to plan the wedding and work on converting, which also means I can focus more on the Bar Exam now.

We still have to pick which weekend in July.  First, I will learn from my old mistake, and do my due diligence to find out which dates don’t work for all essential parties (except for maybe my sister and brother-in-law, who are running around in Spain… but they are programmers, not doctors, and can probably show up for any weekend I demand).

July 2nd is part of a three-day weekend.  Some people think getting married on a holiday weekend is terribly rude because you’re monopolizing your guests’ holiday/imposing greater travel costs, other people think it is awesome because the extra day off adds convenience for your traveling guests.  I don’t think I need to worry too much about which side of this debate is correct because  July 3rd if one of my best friend’s birthdays, and another best friend throws a huge party every July 4, and I don’t really want to pile my wedding on top of those events.

July 9th has a sort of cute date: 07.09.11.  It is two days before another friend’s birthday, but I think that is a little less problematic because she won’t have to worry about being hungover from our open bar on her birthday.  The only disadvantage I can think of now is that proximity to the Fourth of July might make guests grumpy about traveling, or make me miss one of my favorite holidays due to a panicked haze of “OMG I’m getting married in six days.”

July 16th is the day after a full moon, which could result in a fantastic photograph.  But the wedding is inside so this isn’t that significant.

This is hard.  When we were planning a May wedding, we came to the date by process of elimination: avoiding friends’ birthdays and Collin’s parents’ unavailability left me with one date exactly, my birthday, which I thought was awesome.  Now I feel like I am making an epic decision with no helpful guidelines.

I’m so glad I won’t have to pick the specific dates my kids are born.

16 Comments

  1. “I’m glad I don’t have to pick the specific dates our kids are born” – hiiiiilarious.
    It will all work out, I’m sure of it. I think about that all the time too…I have a couple of fantastic family members that are over 90, and I worry about it all the time, that we better hurry this damn thing up.

    But yeah, you can’t control it, and the date will make sense. Once you get clearance from the siblings, take off and don’t look back.

  2. We have a wedding to attend Labor Day weekend and we’re pumped! Why? We have a sweet party/stuntman themed wedding secured to rock our Labor Day Weekend 2010! Plus. It’ll be at one of our favorite local bars. Double whammy!

    If you have your wedding July 4th weekend, your guests won’t mind at all. :) They’ll be just as pumped as I am.

  3. We’re doing ours on a Monday (um, longish story related to wanting a civil ceremony and child custody), but the wedding weeekend is July 16-17, 2011. So I’m totally biased. That said, this weekend seemed to work best for pretty much everyone — it doesn’t interfere with holiday plans, but it’s dead center of summer so still fairly easy for people to get time off of work and all of the kids were out of school. Bam. Done.

    Only drawback: honeymooning options are a bit more limited because it’s high season or ridiculously hot in many parts of the world. But even that has its ups. Canada and the Pacific Northwest is gorgeous and affordable during July, and Tahiti. Plus there is always Hawaii.

    (July was not our favorite month either; we wanted either October or February 8 — the anniversary of our first date — but neither of those dates would work for our friends/family, so July it is.)

    • Here’s the thing about getting married on a Monday: it’s going to be the best Monday ever!

      And I didn’t think about the honeymoon thing. We might do a delayed honeymoon after Collin gets his PhD. Either way, we’ll work it out in time!

  4. OH YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like the 4th of July!!!!! What a celebration we would all have for you both!!!! Its a long weekend and you LOVE America and the FLAG!!!!!( and my Collin used to collect flags too!) Does Pittsburgh do a River festival 4th celebration or anything?????

  5. LIKE LIKE LIKE!!!!

    • Oh and Robin, it’s very nice of you to consider your friends’ birthdays and parties, but crap, if anybody was meant to get married near a day celebrating America…

  6. Mmmm, I am fond of 07/09/11. Not only are they all odd numbers, two are prime numbers! Delicious.

    But um. This is a rough choice indeed. I didn’t like 09/18/10 for a multitude of reasons (I’d originally fallen in love with 10/09/10), but I’ve warmed to it.

    All that said, if you’d love to celebrate your anniversary right near the 4th of July each year, go for it. Think of it as the kickoff of a weekend of spectacular festivities.

    • I’m glad I’m not the only one who looks at the numbers and thinks about things like, “they’re all odd, which means they are good!”

      Something that is nice about 9/18 is that 18 is 9 times 2.

  7. If your wedding is inside, I wouldn’t worry about the heat.

    Don’t worry about it being people’s birthdays. My sister was originally planning her wedding for the day after my birthday and I was totally fine. Our wedding definitely interferes with at least 2-3 of my friend’s birthdays and I just gotta remember to get them a cake. People are grownups and recognize that there are only 365 days in a year. Tomorrow I’m canvassing for my cousin’s campaign for delegate because it was the only day that works, and yeah, it’s my birthday, but whatever. So don’t stress so much about it being on somebody else’s birthday or date, etc.

    Bonus of July 4th weekend wedding is you can have fireworks. Drawback is that traveling might be a nightmare for some people (we just did a Friday night wedding of memorial day weekend up on Long Island and traffic was so bad one of the readers couldn’t make it to the ceremony.)

    What we found was there is a problem with every single date you can pick. There just is. So don’t worry so much about it. And remember: life will continue. So if you miss the 4th of July next year cuz you’re getting married, it’s okay, because there will be a lot of July fourths afterwards to take early anniversary trips on. Plus, you will get the 3 day weekend before the wedding to take care of stuff – look at it as a gift of time!

  8. I agree with Ellie. And Robin, my God, you are the American flag queen of all time and you LOVE AMERICA….it couldn’t be a better fitting date for the fourth of July fairy….as long as Collin likes the date also!

  9. Robin,

    Whenever you do your wedding, your friends will make it work, you know that.

    However, I get the sense that you aren’t jazzed about the weekend of July 4th, for a number of reasons, all of which are legit.

    I think that weekend could be a nightmare. Hotels rooms will be snapped up faster, caterers will be busier, traffic will be trafficy-er. You get all of the trouble of being married on a holiday, without the actual fanfare of doing it on the real date. I mean, if you were going to go for it, go for actual July 4. But that has its own nightmares, not to mention it’s on a Monday.

    The more we talk, the more into Jul 9 you seem. If it works for everyone, go for it!

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