Hosting a Non Saturday Wedding

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I can’t help but think about everything I have in my life to be thankful for. My health, my fur babies, roof over my head, food in my belly, my family… my husband. There are so many things I could say about him that I am thankful for and appreciative of, but the one I want to mention is his ability and willingness to put up with my quirks. I saw a meme once that said, “I don’t know how I put up with you… oh yeah, because you put up with me too.” When I showed this to Chris, we both looked at each other, laughed and he said, “I am happy you do, because no one else will.”

Yes, I plan weddings as part of my living, but when we got engaged Chris also knew that I had been gearing up for this day in my head since I was a teenager. When we started talking about our vision he wisely told me he wanted to be involved in the food and booze selection, but other than that as long as I was happy he didn’t care. Remember that reference to quirks I mentioned a few sentences back? Well, there were a couple of those that Chris had to deal with right off the bat… I have an irrational and unexplainable ‘thing’ for odd numbers – they aren’t my fav. Also, I wanted to get married on a Friday. Obviously, the traditional day of the week to get married is Saturday, but there is nothing that says it is the ONLY day. Today I want to talk about why I decided that the final weekday was the day for me.

Back in 2016 I planned my first Friday wedding. Up to that point, being newer to this industry, it had never occurred to me that you could have a big wedding on any day other than a Saturday, but I liked that it was something different. Ultimately, it made for a very long weekend for me because the venue I was managing at the time also booked a wedding on the following Saturday, so I was left with a double header. Both weddings were great – everyone had a great time, danced the night away and both couples walked away married. Early that next week the lovely ladies from the Friday wedding came back to the venue to collect a few items, so I chatted with them for awhile and asked how the rest of their weekend went. That is when they went on and on about how nice it was to get married before the weekend because it meant they had two whole days to simply hang out with some of their favorite people. At this time, Chris and I weren’t engaged yet, but had already been together for over 2 years, so naturally I had most of our wedding all planned out. After my conversation with this couple something in my mind switched and I decided I wanted to do what they did – I wanted a whole weekend affair! I am going to give you several reasons why I felt getting married on a Friday was the best choice for me. I will also give you a few reasons why I know Saturdays will always be the most popular day of the week for a wedding.

To begin with, Chris’s immediate family lives in Arizona and we typically only get to see them once or twice a year, so I knew with them traveling up here for our big day it was important for us to able to spend time with them where our sole focus wasn’t wedding details. That is one of the reasons I was really drawn to the idea of having two additional days following the wedding to be able to just relax and enjoy time with people we don’t get to see often enough. I also figured, who doesn’t want to have an excuse to take a Friday off of work?! Most of our guests who were traveling (and not part of the wedding) arrived in Spokane either Thursday night or Friday during the day, then they didn’t leave until Sunday, allowing them a full weekend. A lot of our extended family hadn’t been to this area before, so it was fun to share a little bit of our lives with them without feeling like we had to cram everything into one afternoon.

Depending on what your end goal is, this idea can either curb your guest list or pad it. I know when we initially made our guest list I started sweating because it was MUCH larger than I expected it to be, therefore possibly more expensive than we could afford. However, once we decided to have our wedding on a Friday some of our invites slipped into the ‘courtesies’ column. There were certain invitees for whom it was unrealistic to travel on a weekday, so they instead sent their love from afar. However, this did allow us to have more of that intimate wedding feel that we were hoping for.

Additionally, having a weekday wedding means you are not competing for attention with several other weddings. Here in the Inland Northwest there is a pretty clear ‘wedding season’ starting in mid-June and continuing to the first week of October. You have probably been invited to more than one wedding on the same day before. Do you pick one wedding or do you split time between the two weddings – go to the ceremony of one and the reception of the other? A Friday wedding can have the benefit of allowing your local friends to feel like they don’t have to choose who’s wedding to go to… instead it just becomes a multi-wedding weekend for them full of good food, celebration and (usually) free booze!

Finally, having a Friday wedding can potentially save you money. For example, the couple I mentioned from 2016 said that was part of their motivation for choosing the day they did… the venue had a cheaper site fee for Friday and Sunday weddings. This is something I see a lot of venues do because it allows them to fill their entire weekend calendar with weddings and also allows you to get married at the venue of your dreams even if their site fee originally seemed too daunting for you and your budget.

As I said before, there are also some downsides to wanting to have an ‘off day’ wedding. Some of your family or close friends may just not be able to get the day (or half day) off work. Some may be so far away they would need to travel on a Thursday to make it in time and it is just not plausible for them to take two days off work. Then there is the reality that some venues simply do not host weddings on any day other than Saturday. There are a lot of venues out there that host other events during the week or weddings may be secondary to normal day-to-day operations, so they are only able to reserve that one day a week for these very special events.

The date of your wedding is very important and typically one of the first things you think about after getting engaged, so make sure you spend some time going over what is going to work best for you, your fiancé and the people who are on your ‘must be there’ list. By no means do I think that Fridays or Sundays are going to be the up and coming most popular day of the week to hold weddings, but I do think that there is more than one day of the week that may be an option – possibly even a better option – for you. It can be very beneficial to list out your wedding priorities. For example, if the number one thing on that list is a certain photographer, but they are booked on the Saturday of the weekend you want, you might have to consider another day of the week if you want them there to capture your big day. In the big scheme there are the same wedding stressors, whether you get married on a Friday, a Saturday or even a Wednesday. Make sure you always have your A-team backing you up and supporting you through all those important decisions.

Contact me today to make sure everything goes smoothly because if you are like me, your wedding day will live in your memory as one of the best days of your life… no matter what day of the week it was.

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