Behind the Date

I'm actually pretty excited about our wedding date. We went back and forth a bunch of times with dates, first focusing on June, then on September, then back to June, then onto July, then back to September, then back again to June... You get the picture. I was having a tough time trying to figure out what I really wanted in a wedding weekend and how to coordinate our wedding around other events in our lives.

During our search for venues in Virginia, my mom suggested focusing on May and June since that's when the weather is nicest and the flowers are in full bloom. When we looked into the weekends in those two months, early May seemed a bit soon, and late May was already taken by our friends Dan and Neena for their wedding. June was pretty packed as well--all except the last weekend. The first weekend was Alex's birthday, the second was his graduation from Caltech, and the third was taken by a work conference for Alex. Thus, the last weekend seemed like the best choice. The last weekend also had many other fun advantages: there will be a full moon, it's close to the summer solstice, and it's half-way until Christmas (as pointed out by my parents' pastor, Bob). The one disadvantage to the last weekend is that the Farmer's Almanac was calling for "scattered t-storms, seasonable." While I think seasonable sounds better than hot (seasonable should be about 70 degrees F), the thunderstorms part is slightly scary. According to the almanac though, pretty much every weekend has some chance of rain, so we decided we'll just have to cross our fingers that the scattered thunderstorms stay away when we want to be outdoors.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden didn't have that Saturday open at the time, so I started considering Friday and Sunday instead of once again looking into other dates in other months. We all liked the idea of Friday the best. We would start the weekend off with the wedding, in the slot typically taken by the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner in the US. That opened up all day on Saturday, the more traditional wedding day, to hang out in my parents' backyard--lounging by the pool, playing lawn games, and hopefully getting some real quality time with our guests.

Everything seemed to come together in an unexpected, yet pretty perfect way: long summer days; beautiful flowers; a full moon; a formal, fancy Friday; and a casual, pool-side Saturday. We couldn't have asked for anything better... except maybe for the Almanac to have predicted clear skies! Cross your fingers with us, won't you?!