How to Pick a Wedding Date... Part Two

The night of the engagement, after all the parents, siblings, family left... Z and I were pooped! I mean, just flat out exhausted. And I am almost positive that I was still in shock. For real. I was in this weird state of euphoria and numbness all at the same time.

We were laying in bed, talking about how on earth we plan a wedding. We realized that timing-wise we either needed to get married in the month between Scotland and the my Post-doc or wait until we came home. Our logic was, if we waited until we came home in Fall 2014, we would need time to plan (maybe 6 mths?) which would put us Spring of 2015... That seemed like a LONG way off. Granted, we thought maybe it was good to have a longer engagement since we got engaged after 6 whole months. But, that's not just us. We wanted to be husband and wife while living overseas, together, for two years.

That brought us to September 2012. Ok, well thats quite a few weekends from which to choose. Sept 1, Sept 8, Sept 15, Sept 22, and Sept 29. We decided we wanted to be home for a little after the wedding, and not wed and dash, so to speak. So we cut out the 29th right away.

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Next I brought out the laptop, and typed a few oh-so-important terms into the search bar: High Holidays 2012. Rosh Hashannah 9/17 - 9/18, Yom Kippur 9/26 and Sukkot starting the evening of 9/30. That count down the choices a bit: Sept 1, Sept 8, Sept 15, Sept 22, and Sept 29.

The next search was: sunset times september 2012. Why you may ask... One has to wait until the end of Shabbat until a wedding ceremony can proceed. This is why you never see a Friday night Jewish wedding, and Saturday evening weddings must start after sundown. The sun is still out late in September, so I was worried we would have to start the ceremony really late. Ive been to some weddings where dinner wasnt serviced until 10pm! It does not bode well to have tired, hungry, and sometimes drunk guests.

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Sunset Times
Sept 1: 7:27pm
Sept 8: 7:16 pm
Sept 15: 7:04 pm

Hm, that was a little late. Ideally I thought having the ceremony at 5:30/6 would then allow dinner starting to be served around 7:30 (a little late but perfectly ok dinner time after people fill up during cocktail hour)! But how to start a wedding that early when sundown wasn't until after 7.

This was actually a super easy answer. And I had it all along... See going into this conversation, I already knew what date I would like to have. For many reasons. We would get married Sunday, September 2!

Z was so not happy when I suggested this. We cant get married on a Sunday, people have to travel, people have to work. I think he could tell by my silent smirk that he was missing something. Labor Day. That's right, the first weekend of September is a three-day weekend! Perfect.

The Sunday of a 3-day weekend wedding would allow all of our out of town guests an extra day to relax, it would allow us to start before sundown, and the price would (hopefully) be a little less since its still considered a Sunday affair.

The next morning we had brunch with my parents. And told them we picked a date. Then we called and told his parents. Needless to say, the mom's were a little taken back. And, in truth, I think they were both upset and felt out of the loop. But Z and I did it all on our own. And I am so happy we chose the holiday weekend.

We will share our anniversary weekend with so many friends and family... I have been to a Labor Day weekend wedding almost every year of my life! Its sort of an untold Jewish tradition, ha. Plus, our wedding weekend will be my parents' 30th anniversary weekend! If that's not good luck, I don't know what is!