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Wedding Dilemma
Prime
UKRegistered User regular
UKRegistered User regular
We are trying to nail down our wedding date and although I'm not after being told what to do for our wedding by strangers I would welcome some outside perspective or personal anecdotes to help me work out the best course of action.
We are aiming for a midweek wedding because the venue my other half has fallen in love with is £££££ and is 1/5 the cost mid week. Due to this we have to have it during the school holidays for a number of reasons but mostly because a lot of the closest friends are teachers. This leaves the week before Christmas and towards the end of October. We originally decided on December as although its still winter the venue puts up lights and Christmas trees all over the place making it that much nicer as well as the general atmosphere being...well happier.
The problem we now have is I am only have 1 Best man and 2 Grooms men because quite frankly these 3 are my closest friends and the only ones I would want in those positions. Due to the date, mid week and just before Christmas we decided to ask all the important people if they had any huge issues with the date before we slapped down the deposit. All seemed fine until one of my grooms men got back to me telling me he wouldn't be able to book time off work in Dec (manager in large retail company).
This has left me in a very awkward position with my wife to be, but to her credit she is being very diplomatic about it despite not really having her heart in an October wedding.
Do I give my wife the day she has her heart set on or do I insist that we will have to do it in October instead? Is it about the people that are there or will we remember the day as a whole more?
Anyone got any insight from their own weddings?
We are aiming for a midweek wedding because the venue my other half has fallen in love with is £££££ and is 1/5 the cost mid week. Due to this we have to have it during the school holidays for a number of reasons but mostly because a lot of the closest friends are teachers. This leaves the week before Christmas and towards the end of October. We originally decided on December as although its still winter the venue puts up lights and Christmas trees all over the place making it that much nicer as well as the general atmosphere being...well happier.
The problem we now have is I am only have 1 Best man and 2 Grooms men because quite frankly these 3 are my closest friends and the only ones I would want in those positions. Due to the date, mid week and just before Christmas we decided to ask all the important people if they had any huge issues with the date before we slapped down the deposit. All seemed fine until one of my grooms men got back to me telling me he wouldn't be able to book time off work in Dec (manager in large retail company).
This has left me in a very awkward position with my wife to be, but to her credit she is being very diplomatic about it despite not really having her heart in an October wedding.
Do I give my wife the day she has her heart set on or do I insist that we will have to do it in October instead? Is it about the people that are there or will we remember the day as a whole more?
Anyone got any insight from their own weddings?
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What if you move the wedding solely for him and it turns out that he would have been able to attend in December after all for x reason?
We had considered that, but he is unlikely to leave his current job anytime soon.
I think I haven't quite gotten across something important. ANY one of these 3 could have easily have been my best man. The best man is only so due to me having known him the longest out of the 3 (barely). These guys are like brothers to me.
And again - you do NOT know what will happen. He may not feel like leaving his current job anytime soon, but that changes in an instant. In January 2012 I had absolutely no inkling that I was going to be looking for another job soon. Hell, in April I had no idea. But in May I had a revelation that I just didn't want to do my job anymore, started looking for work, and by July I was in a new job. You just don't know what will happen, and making an important decision about YOUR wedding based on HIS work - that's just silly. I wouldn't even have made a decision about my wedding decisions based on my own job, let alone someone else's;
He has literally an entire year to figure out how to be at your wedding. If he's that close a friend, he'll make it happen somehow. I mean - for all you know, he's simply assuming he won't be able to get time off in December due to it being the retail crazy shopping season. But has he mentioned to his boss that it is for his best friend's wedding? Bosses just aren't usually as coldhearted as people think or popular culture would have you believe. Sure, maybe he won't be able to get a week off to spend it with you before the wedding on a bachelor party or whatever, and maybe he won't make it to the reception. But I am sure he could get a day or half a day off work to come to the ceremony.
But if it was my wedding, and it was still nearly twelve months away, I would be telling my friend to spend the year figuring out how to get time off. Even at Christmas time, and even for a retail manager, getting one or two days off work for a wedding should not be impossible with a year's notice.
Hell, they should even have time to hire temporary extra manpower to fill his shoes for the days when he isn't there.
personally the distinction between an october or a december wedding seems fairly irrelevant per se; is the venue only available at all during the deep winter months or something?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The only difference in the venue is that in Dec they have more Christmas theme with lights and done up trees in the grounds. But this is part of the appeal to her. Even I have to say the place will look pretty damn cool from what I've seen of previous events, and normally I dont give a damn about things like this.
October's a lovely month, too, though. I think you'll make a good time of it either way.
Cheers for the advise/opinions. Helped me straighten my head out a little which is swimming in dates, appointments and costs!
We call those 'bachelor parties' here. The guys get together for typically some manly type thing.
Also another vote for a Christmas wedding. It's nice when some of the decorating is done for you. For example we had ours during a big cicada year, so decorations and music was covered.
^ But seriously, this.
Especially if it's midweek, as people are more protective of weekends during the holidays.
We had a good chat at lunch, we are booking the date tomorrow for Dec...probably :P
Okay, this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but nuts to the whole "your wedding is for your wife".
I'm sure, in the history of weddings, there have been a couple of Grooms that wanted the wedding to turn out as perfect as the bride wanted. Hell, I'm sure TLC or A&E has an upcoming show about such grooms(and if not, dibs on pitching it).
I'm kinda like you where I only have a couple of close friends, and if want told me that he couldn't attend the wedding date, I would try really hard to see if we could come up with an alternative that works for bride and I.
Now obviously, all these is moot if you don't feel this way, or simply want to make your upcoming wife as happy as possible.
To make it more relevant to the original post, I'd that for me a midweek, week before Christmas wedding would seem harder to attend than one in October.
Depends on the bride. My wife and I agree that if we ever did it all again (which of course we won't, cuz wedding are NUTS) we would just elope. It was a whole lot of pain and grievances with family when in the end all we wanted was just to be married. But my wife is a lot more easy-going than most folk.
Lines like this: suggest a pretty traditional "girl has vision of magical day in her head" kind of bride-to-be though, and suggesting that the OP cater to those fancies isn't unreasonable.
With that being said, if you and your wife love the venue and she's also in love with the December wedding idea it is probably better to go that route. The only exception I would make to this is if you can't see your wedding happening without your Groomsman being able to attend.
I would also say that despite your best planning things WILL happen. My wife and I planned our wedding out and had everything paid for and setup perfectly. The day before the wedding both the officiant and the best man got the flu and the day of the wedding my Mom ended up having a heart attack and missed the wedding (she's fine now, just bad timing), so just realize that despite any and all planning there's a chance that things will happen and the most important thing is that both you and your wife have the event you want.
i have faith that something will happen this year to help him be able to attend.
Worst comes to worst, can he not simply chuck a sickie?
honestly, if I was him I'd just take the day off work anyway and dare them to do something about it, but we're in Australia where employers have to have a seriously seriously good reason to fire you and "took a day off without permission to go to best friend's wedding when boss was being a dick and wouldn't allow it" would see the employer up in front of the Fair Work tribunal if he tried to fire you for it.
I actually have to disagree on this one. I work in a union job where days off are awarded based on seniority. Because of my low seniority (despite having worked at the company for 7 years now), I can pretty much never get days off in December, it's just too popular a month for everyone, even if I apply for the time in January.
That said, I agree that you don't necessarily want to schedule your wedding around this one person.
Edit: Also I should add that days available or not, I'd just call in without pay the day of myself, or trade days off or something.
i think you and your spouse-to-be should really decide what is your priority for the wedding, since it is your wedding. if the priority is to get this awesome venue at an affordable price, and no other venue will do, and that you really want December, then i think you're gonna have to convince all of your wedding party to make the time. is your wife hoping that your family and friends are able to attend for the wedding? then she needs to understand that holding in December is going to really be difficult for a lot of people, not just your groomsmen.
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My wife was not a bridezilla in any aspect. If anything, I was a groomzilla. There are absolutely couples who defy every stereotype in the world.
But it is as close to a universal truth as it is possible to be that the wedding should be your wife's day, and the value that you take out of it is giving your new wife the most beautiful moment she can get.
If you can't trade days/influence with someone to be in a damned wedding party, then either all of the people you work with are horrible or you don't care about the person's wedding you're attending.
This is ignorant and dickish. Let's not do this.
I disagree, but let's just end it there.