Stress of weekday wedding for out of towners

I agree with your fiance. I would only recommend a weekday wedding if everyone you were inviting lived in or near where you are getting married.

Even with time to plan, people from out of state may not be able to make it. We announced our wedding a year in advance and just before both my husbands aunt and uncle (married) had to get new jobs (unplanned) so only one of them could come because of time off.
If their attendance is important I would take that into consideration when choosing. But ultimately it comes down to what works best for you and your FH.

I would probably stick to the same date if possible. Have you already announced your date to people? Or sent out save the dates?

I considered having Friday wedding but also thought about pre-wedding events and some of our wedding party and guest will be coming from out of town so they would need to arrive sooner. and take more time off work. We decided to stick to a Saturday wedding.

I think a weekday wedding would probably work if everyone lived close, but even with months of notice idk if everyone would be able to come in for an event on a Wednesday. My fiancé has family coming in from 4 hrs away and we're doing a Friday wedding. I still think I'm pushing it a bit but hopefully people will be willing to take a long weekend

We have already sent out save the dates, luckily they didn’t have any mention of location on them! Thank you for your insights so far, a Wednesday wedding does seem rather difficult for those not in town, assuming the guests would need to take off at least two-three days it seems like a big ask to make of them. Keeping the date seems less of a logistical nightmare, it’s just a compromise of ascetics in the end.

I wouldn't want to take time off for a weekday wedding, especially if I had to travel to get there. It would end up being more than a day away from work. Not feasible for *me* with how I allocate my time off.

A Wednesday wedding means 3 days off at a minimum for guests who have to travel. I think that’s expecting a lot no matter how much notice you give.

I wouldn't recommend it. I'm with your fiancé on this one.

There is no way I would attend an out of town wedding on a Wednesday. That’s just asking too much of guests.


Also, the wedding is close enough now that people may have already booked travel arrangements. I know everything is cancelable and it may not happen anyway, but we are supposed to attend a wedding on your same date, and we do already have our flights and hotels booked!

Thanks guys, it was just one of those thoughts rolling around in my head trying to scrabble and come up with other options this close to the date. I don’t have family out of state really so it wasn’t something I’ve really ever had to consider so it was nice to get other peoples’ opinions on the matter with different points of view!

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I might be confused, are you changing it to 2022, or still this year? Are you changing the venue so you maybe can have it outside?

If it were a Friday or even a Monday - maybe. Not a chance for Wednesday. That would require taking 2-3 days off work. No way.

View Quoted Comment It would still be 2021, just a date change. I’m change venue because my current one can now only allow 24 guests, and we can’t cut the guest list by that much. It’s already a small wedding at 45-50, so we are moving to a much larger venue that can still have that many people.

Yes, it's unreasonable. Some people's jobs are very strict

Congrats!!! We originally were planning on a wedding on 6/15/21. We have recently decided to push it to our anniversary 12/8/21. This is a Wednesday. We have out of state family coming and its also in between holidays. So far the change has been met with positive vibes( where as our original date wasn't). If you have people coming in from out of town, they will more than likely have to take time off of work. I have found in wedding planning you can't please everyone.

For what it’s worth, we’re having a destination wedding on a Thursday and we’ve gotten pretty much zero push-back from our VIP guests (we bounced the idea off the people we wanted there most before we booked to be sure it was possible). A lot of them are taking 2-3 days off work and making it into a vacation to stay for the weekend, or come in earlier in the week. I think this is going to vary a lot depending on your people. Many of our close friends and family are either in pretty flexible jobs, jobs with weird work schedules (ie work weekends and have some week days off) and/or are retired so it wasn’t a big deal for most of them. We accept that a lot of folks won’t be able to make it but we cleared it with the people we knew we absolutely wanted there so it worked!

View Quoted Comment That's what we did too. As it was we had to cut most of our guest list. If someone doesn't or can't make it, we just ask they let us know as soon as possible since we do have a lot of people who didn't make the final list.

Yes, I do think it's unreasonable to have a Wednesday wedding if you have out of town guests. I would never consider attending a wedding in the middle of the week as an out of town guest unless I were actually in the wedding. I agree with your FH on this one.

Yeah that’s going to be a hard pass. If I have to travel I’m going to drive or fly on Tuesday and potentially back on Thursday if I’m not hungover and then the whole week is shot, I’m not doing that for a wedding.

While some can get that time off due to advance notice (send out save the dates asap) others choose not to and prefer weekends no matter what.