When it comes to planning your wedding, choosing your wedding date is one of the first big tasks you have to tackle. There’s more to it than you might think!

Plan at Least One Year in Advance

A good rule of thumb is to give yourself at least one year to plan your wedding. You will have the most flexibility with booking vendors with that much lead time. Weddings can certainly be planned in under a year, but your options are limited.

It’s good to have conversations with your significant other prior to getting engaged about when you might like to get married. If you want an autumn wedding, but you don’t get engaged until February, you’re going to have a hard time. You might end up having to wait almost two years to get married at that point, or choose a different time of year.

TL;DR here’s the video version

There Are Only So Many Saturdays in a Year

Decide whether you must have a Saturday wedding or if you would be okay with a Friday or Sunday wedding. There are only 52 Saturdays in a year. And once you take into account that most weddings happen between April and October, that’s only 28 Saturdays. Those Saturdays go fast! Especially the ones in June and October, which are the two most popular months to get married, nationwide.

Consider Family Events

Is someone in one of your families celebrating a milestone birthday the year you want to get married? Will there be a big family get-together for that event? Do you want to avoid that same weekend, or try to incorporate your wedding celebration into the same weekend?

Does your family (or some part of your family) take an annual vacation at the same time every year? Do you want to work around that vacation to ensure that they can come to your wedding?

Consider Work Schedules

What do you do for a living? Accountants probably don’t want to get married in the spring during tax season. People who work in the wine industry probably want to avoid getting married during the fall harvest. Are you an attorney with a case scheduled to go to trial in September? Don’t get married in September!

Where Do You Want to Honeymoon?

Think about your honeymoon for a moment. If you plan to go to a Caribbean island, then getting married in September—during hurricane season—is not a great idea. Do you live in a hurricane zone? Or a fire zone?

If you plan to honeymoon in the Southern Hemisphere (South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Maldives), remember that our summer is their winter. Think about whether you want to delay your honeymoon to accommodate conditions at your destination.

Avoid Major Holidays

I wrote an entire blog post about this recently. There are a lot of good reasons not to get married over major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. You don’t want your wedding to compete against family obligations.

Choose Two or Three Possible Dates

Once you’ve considered all of the above, try to come up with a couple of possible dates that will work for you. This will make it much easier to find a venue. If you already have your heart set on a venue, then you’ll have to work around their schedule. Many venues book a year (or more) in advance. But again, Fridays and Sundays are less popular days, and if your chosen venue can accommodate multiple weddings in a weekend, you’ll have better luck if you can be flexible with your date.

Questions? Let me know in the comments. Need help with your wedding? I’m only a Contact Form away!