You wanted the long version, here it is: the full timeline of events that led to us deciding to have a Friday wedding:
10/30/2014 – We begin dating! We both agree through an unspoken pact that 1) Fall is the best season and, 2) if we were ever to wed one day, say ten years down the road, it would be in the Fall.
7/9/2023 – We get engaged! When and where are we going to get married? Time to do research!
8/5/2023 – We tour the upstairs space of Revolution Brewpub and fall in love with the venue. We know it’s where we have to get married!
8/6/2023 – After some debate on whether we should have a Friday or Saturday wedding, we ultimately decide that Saturday, October 5th, 2024 is the best option, and confirm with Revolution to see if they have that date available. Unfortunately, that date is booked, but they have the next Saturday’s date, October 12th, 2024, available. Close enough! We want to move quick to avoid having another potential date option taken, so after talking to immediate family to ensure there isn’t any major date conflict, we reach back out to Revolution to confirm!
8/9/2023 – We sign the contract for a wedding on October 12th, 2024! We order “Save the Date”s the very same day!
8/12/2023 – We receive our “Save the Date”s and they look beautiful! We are both in high spirits and super excited for the wedding!
8/16/2023 – We book our photographer for October 12th, 2024. We pay a non-refundable deposit of 50%. Surely this will not be a problem down the road!
10/13/2023 – As we tell family of our wedding date, we learn that (according to every website we found on Google) this is actually an incredibly awful (AKA forbidden) date to get married according to the Jewish faith – Yom Kippur. Both of us have Jewish family and are slightly bummed to hear we picked such a bad date, but we don’t let that stop us from trekking forward!
10/17/2023 – When it rains, it pours. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the Chicago Marathon’s 2024 date gets announced – Sunday, October 13th, 2024. This major event leads to a (greedy, unnecessary, and capitalistic) increase in hotel room prices across the city.
11/6/2023 – As a final step before we send out the “Save the Date”s, we finally hear back from some hotels about getting our guests a good rate via a block. Unfortunately, they know what we don’t, and we soon learn the horrible truth…
11/9/2023 – After many heated discussions, internal debates, and overall stress, we decide that no one wants to come to a wedding where hotels are $900 a night and flights are double/triple what they usually are. We make the tough decision to move our wedding date so there’s a higher chance of guests being able to celebrate / not being incredibly upset with us. We reach out to Revolution to ask what other Saturdays they have available, and get some good news!
November 16th, 2024 worked perfectly for us; however, our photographer did not have that date open anymore:
While losing the deposit isn’t the end of the world, we both agree that we love Roni Rose’s photography style and she was a big contributor towards the excitement we felt towards the wedding. In the weeks we spent researching potential photographers, we couldn’t find one that came close to how we felt about her.
Nate suggests pushing the date back a year to Fall, 2025 to get married (Jen immediately rejects this plan). Jen suggests that we either keep the date as-is and just apologize to the guests beforehand (Nate rejects this plan) or move it to the weekend either before/after Thanksgiving (they both reject this plan). Neither of us want a December wedding (Chicago has famously cold winters and is December really Fall?!). Seemingly out of options, we turn to the only alternative left: having a Friday wedding.
We fully recognize the unique challenges a Friday wedding may present, including the need for some guests to rearrange work schedules and take a day off that could have been used elsewhere, which is why we put this whole page together – to show you that we did NOT make this decision lightly. We deeply appreciate your understanding and any effort you make to join us for this special day. For those who can adjust their schedules to celebrate with us, we’re hopeful the more reasonable non-$900/night hotel rooms and who-knows-what airfare prices will help.
We’re incredibly excited to celebrate our wedding with you and are grateful for your understanding and support throughout this journey. Thank you for reading some of the highlights of our early wedding planning journey :)