Common Misconceptions: Choosing Your Date?
Hello all you beautiful brides-to-be! There seems to be confusion I’ve noticed when brides come in to tour at Stonebridge Manor, so I’d love to address it in my blog. Unless your date is the #1 most important thing to you, you don’t choose your venue based on the date. Usually, you will go in to a venue and fall in love with it and then see if the date you want is available and which alternative dates are available.
This sometimes comes as a shock to brides, but if you are getting married in peak months in Arizona (March or October), there is a good chance that all of the Saturday nights for those months may start to be booked up about a year in advance. This is a little daunting to those of us that would rather just have our wedding about 6-9 months after getting engaged, but if you’re planning a short engagement you may just have to see which dates are available and go with the flow.
Of course as with any aspect of wedding planning, flexibility and a good attitude are KEY. I originally wanted a weekend September wedding date, but we actually have gone with a weekday November date! What the heck! How did I get talked into that?!?!
Actually there are so many factors that came into play when it came to this huge compromise. 2016 was an unusually hot fall through about mid-November. Since I want an outdoor ceremony and an outdoor reception, I had to take this possibility of unbearable heat into consideration for my guests. My thought was that pushing the wedding back a couple of months would not influence whether or not people came to my wedding or whether I still wanted to marry my fiancé, so the compromise began.
As I said, I also wanted a weekend wedding but I am actually having a weekday wedding. This was a compromise based on budget. In order to get the venue I wanted, I had to be flexible with having a weekday wedding instead to cut the costs right off the bat by thousands of dollars! My thought with this was that if people love me enough to come to my wedding, it isn’t going to matter if it’s on a Thursday as opposed to a Saturday. They will still be there!
My advice while venue shopping: keep an open mind. You may be so sure (just like me) about what you want, but you may have to or want to go with something else once you find the venue that is just “the one!” Whatever you go with will be absolutely stunning, and the people that love you the most will make an effort to be there with you.
Happy Planning!
xoxo
Chelsea
Photo: Courtney Lively Photography
Florals: Zuzu’s Petals AZ