I need an off-season, non-birthday Saturday. And hold the rain.
By Courtney Danielson
Let’s make a wager, shall we? I’m willing to bet that within the first four minutes of being told that you got engaged, every single person you spoke with — even your parents — asked if you’d set a date yet. The only thing that might delay the question is if your engagement story takes more than four minutes to tell.
While Chuck and I hadn’t officially set a date by the time we announced our engagement to our family (how could we have — only a few hours had passed!), we had a pretty good idea of when we wanted it to be. Since we knew that we’d be having a large number of guests, we knew that a peak-season date wouldn’t be the most economical choice. My mother suggested setting a date in the fall of 2014, but Chuck and I didn’t want to be rushed while planning the big day. I certainly didn’t want to wait until fall 2015, so we collectively settled on spring 2015, sometime between March and May.
After taking a peek at the calendar to see what dates Saturdays fell on between March and May 2015, we nixed one date right away — April 18, my dad’s birthday. From there, just about every other Saturday was available as a potential wedding date…and off we went!
Now, here is where you might be expecting me to say that the next thing I did was start calling venues, but you’d be wrong. The next thing I did was check the Farmers’ Almanac.
They say that rain on your wedding day is good luck, and maybe it is. It poured on my parents’ wedding day (in the photos you can see that my grandmother’s dress is wet up to her knees!) and they’ve been happily married for twenty-nine years. But since springtime is notoriously rainy, I didn’t want to end up selecting a date that usually boasts a monsoon. And I kind of had my heart set on one particular date…
March 21, 2007, was the date of our first date, and since there wasn’t ever an official “we’re boyfriend and girlfriend” moment and we pretty much just jumped into a relationship, we celebrate that as our anniversary. The idea of getting married on what would be our eight year (!!) anniversary seemed perfect to Chuck and me, and — better yet — the Farmers’ Almanac confirmed it. It hasn’t rained, or even had any inkling of precipitation, on March 21 in the last thirteen years. The temperature, however, hasn’t been as linear. It’s ranged from thirty to seventy degrees. So while the temp is a total toss up, I’m fairly confident that it won’t be raining when I walk down the aisle.
And if it does…then it’s good luck.