It's a Date!

Let the countdown begin!

We have finally decided on a date for our wedding! On June 23rd, in just ninety-seven days, Johnny and I will be exchanging our wedding vows! Imagine, that is just a little over 3 months away and there is still so much to do! Everyone is probably thinking, "You guys are crazy! There is no way you'll get everything planned!" Well, I'll admit, before we decided, Johnny and I did have reservations about our abilities to plan a wedding in 4 months or less. For a while we even considered moving our wedding to a date in September that Grandview had available. After all, Autumn is one of my favorite seasons too and it would not have been too difficult to imagine a fall wedding. However, after talking it over and with several other people who have planned their weddings with as much time or less, we felt the time frame was manageable. Potentially, more stressful, yes, but not unmanageable.

When Johnny and I first talked about dates, I wanted it to be in May or June. Aside from Autumn when the colors are changing, I think Spring is one of the prettier seasons of the year. It's a season with a lot of natural beauty as everything is turning green, flowers begin to bloom, and new life springs forth after it's cold dormant hibernation through winter. It's also warmer, with milder, less chilly temperatures, making it more pleasant to be outside. A very important detail for someone, such as ourselves, who are planning an outdoor wedding. I am just hoping that by late June we will also be escaping the humid rainstorms that grace our Spring/Summers down South. This was our reasoning in skipping past the dates in May for one in June.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the most common months for weddings are in May, June, September, and October. So, with a date in June we were competing with every other couple wanting to get married during the prime seasons of the year. It's amazing, I never realized just how many people get married until I started trying to book dates for the wedding. Suddenly, it seemed like the whole world around me was getting married! Luckily, availability was not really a problem at Grandview since we had decided to get married on a weekday. Most venues are more expensive on Friday and Saturdays, then Sundays, or days during the week. At Grandview the difference was pretty significant between the weekend dates and weekdays. So we decided a Monday would make the best sense as a three day weekend for anyone wanting to come visit on vacation for the wedding. This option also allowed us to save money in a high dollar area of our budget.

Summer is usually when people spend time off from work to take a vacation. We figured our guests were more likely to attend our wedding if we picked a date in June rather than September. This was particularly advantageous for those with kids who would be in school, which included several people in my immediate family and new family alike. So if any of our guests want to come this Summer and vacation to our fair city, we can recommend lots of fun things to do in Chattanooga, besides our wedding while you are visiting.

Our last consideration for the date was to avoid any holidays a week before and after our wedding. Following anniversaries are a big consideration, particularly how we might spend them together. Johnny and I both like to travel and odds are pretty high that we will be spending anniversaries abroad for the next few years. We have aspirations to see all seven continents (yes even Antarctica) within our lifetime and all fifty states! We each have a few left or several on the list! At any rate, we both have an immense love for traveling and we both know how traveling can become both expensive and irritating around the holidays. Avoiding the holidays was a huge consideration to the date, which June 23rd seemed to solve!

So tick tock let the countdown begin...