The Great Date Debate

So naturally, when a couple announces their engagement to friends and family, the first question to be asked is usually "Did you choose a date yet?"

I always thought I would be an autumn bride. I used to work for a wedding photographer as a retoucher, and I always loved the photos of autumn brides taken in front of brightly colored trees. I just naturally like autumn: the colors, the temperature, the foods, hayrides, pumpkin picking, wearing cozy sweaters, and apple cider, mmm! And furthermore, I HATE the extreme temperatures of summer and winter, so they were never options. John agreed on all points, and so we set a tentative date of October 24, 2009.

However, as I started to brainstorm ideas for my wedding color palette, I began to feel very restricted by the season. Even though I do like autumn colors, I didn't necessarily want shades of red, orange, or gold in my wedding palette, and especially not brown. In the mid 2000's chocolate brown became THE wedding color and I feared that using brown in my wedding would look very dated when I looked back at the photos in a few years' time (well, let's face it, they will look dated no matter what, but I didn't think chocolate brown would help matters any). Plus, I didn't like the clashing of chocolate brown bridesmaid dresses against black tuxedos. I know that brown tuxedos exist, and brown vests under black tuxedos are also a popular option, but I still wasn't that big a fan of either option.

Then I remembered a pretty wedding gown that I fell in love with when going with my friend, Paige, to shop for bridesmaid dresses for her own August 2008 wedding. It was a white satin gown with pick-ups and a soft pink beaded sash around the waist. I thought the pink sash was just lovely, and since I am always striving to be a little bit different, I thought the touch of color in the wedding gown was really nice. But soft pink in the autumn?

I also wasn't digging the nearly 2-year long engagement we had in store. Not to be morbid, but it was important to me that our grandparents attend our wedding (ironic considering that my Nonni wasn't able to make it in the end), and since our grandparents were already in their mid to late 80's, I didn't want to have an extremely long engagement and risk them not being able to attend due to illness, or worse.

So then I started thinking about pushing the date forward 5 months to May 2009. May would hopefully be late enough in the spring to avoid all those "April showers," yet still be comfortable temperature-wise... not too cool, not too warm. I decided that if May 9 fell on a Saturday, it would be a sign, and then that would have to be our new wedding date. (Nine is my lucky number, and I was devastated when I found out that 9-9-09 fell on a Wednesday.) And hooray, it was! I started dreaming about wearing that dress with the pink sash and realized that I would have a plethora of beautiful flowers to choose from in the spring as well.

But then there was one tiny problem in that John's friends Nick and Cheri had already chosen an early June date for their wedding. They got engaged a few months before we did, and we worried that maybe we would be "cutting in line" by moving our date to the month before theirs. But in the end we had to do what made the most sense for us, and the May 9 date stuck. (Sorry Nick and Cheri!!)

We then started to notice some fun coincidences regarding our wedding date. It ended up being our exact 50-month anniversary, since we officially became boyfriend/girlfriend on March 9, 2005. Also, 23 is John's lucky number, and 5 + 9 + 09 = 23! I was just happy that I got two out of three possible 9's in my date, ha ha, and as Meat Loaf so famously put it, "two outta three ain't bad!"