If you happen to be one of the thousands of single women that are engaged to a man in the military, you might be facing an unusual problem, the inability to pre-plan the wedding date too far ahead.
To make matters worse, is the fact that many of the soldiers serving in places like Iraq or other spots around the world can usually only come back home on the holidays. This is not the most opportune time, as your prospective wedding guests will probably want to celebrate the holidays with their own families around the time your wedding day is planned.
Since you’re playing the part of bride and the hostess, you should take your wedding guests into consideration when planning your wedding. Ultimately however, should you not want to wait until your groom to be is finally retired from the military, you will definitely have to make some tough decisions about when to schedule your wedding day.
Should your fiancé be home right around the Christmas holiday season, think about how a wedding date close to Christmas or even New Years is going to affect the people you planned on inviting to your wedding. Try to look at this from your guests point of view.
The days before Christmas are usually quite frantic for a lot of people. Consider all the last minute presents to purchase, all the meals that need to be planned and bought, plus going out and selecting the tree, not to mention getting it all trimmed up in holiday flair. With this in mind, setting a wedding day close to Christmas could turn out to be more of a hassle than a blessing for many people to even consider attending, especially if these guests are arriving from an out of town destination.
A wedding day somewhere around the New Year, however, is usually more flexible. Purchasing something new to wear and figuring out which party they want to attend is about the most that people will do to get ready for the new year celebration. So even if you schedule your wedding day on December 28 or 29, there would still be enough time for them to return home and prepare for their New Years party without too much interruption.
Also consider in regards to your wedding date is that for a New Year celebration, many of your wedding guests want to be spending time with their friends and acquaintances. However, the Christmas celebration is geared more towards close family, so your intended wedding guests probably wouldn’t mind skipping a New Years party as much as they would the Christmas party. Especially if they have to fly into town and then stay over until the New Years holiday.
The #1 responsibility though, as bride and groom, is to first take your own marriage plans into consideration. If it happens that you must have your wedding day on the 23rd, because your fiancé must re-deploy right after the Christmas celebration, then you just might have to opt for that wedding day and celebrate it with less guests. Even though this can be heart-wrenching, your wedding guests will surely understand and be supportive with your choice.
Of course, if you have always dreamed about having the absolute perfect wedding with your family, friends and everyone else in attendance, then you might just have to postpone the wedding day. Just realize that you won’t be able predict your fiancé’s military future with the ability to pinpoint a wedding day too far in advance.
Another very important consideration for these women who are engaged to a military man, you should check into getting some wedding insurance. You just never know what type of world events could turn your fiancé’s scheduled leave into a short visit and cause the wedding day to be yet again postponed without your knowledge far enough in advance to work out some sort of deal with your wedding vendors. It would be a shame to lose all the deposits you made.
You should look forward to the future wedding day with excitement and joy knowing that you will soon have the honor of marrying a military man! Just remember to try not to get too worried about the people who will or won’t be able to attend your wedding celebration. The life that you and your fiance have selected is certain to be filled with unexpected twists and turns in scheduling. This is the first, and probably not the last, of a lot of planning decisions you will have to make.
