“Saving” Your Date! Let’s hear all of the details!

Our wedding date is August 11th, so soon now!

We became engaged on August 25th last year, a day before our 1 year anniversary (we were celebrating then). We quickly narrowed down that August would be the best month, as summer really only lasts for July-August in Alberta and July is more unpredictable than August.

We knew we wanted to get married in the mountains, where we spend as much time possible. We started looking immediately, as places in the mountains book up fast (Canmore, Banff, surrounding area). We were quickly told our original planned date (August long weekend Saturday) was unavailable EVERYWHERE. So we opened up to the remaining weekends in August. Even then, such limited availability. We viewed 2 places (1 informally, the other scheduled) and went with the scheduled one almost right away. It was pretty much perfect.

However, we did have to change our date from a Saturday to a Sunday, as there were only 2 other Saturdays left in the summer and they were in June (1 being the Canada Day weekend, no thanks!). It turned out to be fine for us as most of our guests are coming from Ontario so it's no big deal that it's on a Sunday, as they'll be vacationing anyways.

We chose the date October 5th 2019.

First thing we did was pick a year. We got engaged Dec. 30th 2017 and wanted to buy a house first so that automatically bumped us to 2019. Then the FH veto'd Winter due to how cold it gets in Winterpeg, and I veto'd Summer due to how hot it gets as well (we range from -40 all the way to +40). Spring was mutually veto'd as it could still have snow or could have rain... Which left Fall!

Fall is perfect as it's the end of harvest season and the beginning of "off season" of weddings which meant big discounts!

Then it was either September or October. We avoided the long weekends and the weekends where Aunt Flo would be in town.... which left like 3 dates. We picked October 5th as we have our dating anniversary on the 5th of March.

We knew we wanted a fall wedding as FH does not like being hot and sweaty in a suit. So for us we went to our venue with any date between the beginning of September and the end of October.

We ruled out the first weekend of September because of the long weekend, The second weekend is my birthday, our venue was booked the weekend after that. We knew we didn't want to do thanksgiving weekend in October because we go up north and didn't want to miss that. We also wanted to keep it somewhat warm, and didn't want to go too late into October with colder weather.

So between the last weekend of September and First weekend in October we went with October 4th. We were both ok with a Friday wedding to give us a longer weekend, and that date was available with our venue!

We picked the weekend after Labor day weekend for a couple of reasons:

- To avoid the unbearable Summer heat of Ottawa/Gatineau;
- To avoid the price jump of having a long weekend wedding
That's pretty much how we picked our wedding date!

What's funny though is that I totally forgot my parents' wedding anniversary (thought it was a couple of days prior) and we ended up picking the same date LOL. Thankfully, my parents are beyond happy about it.

We didn't do save the date cards or evites. Just picked a date in the summer season knowing the timing was right.