The evolution of a wedding date

I have blogged a bit about the Zellweger Mansion, but I figured it deserved a bit of back story as to how we decided on our venue and our date. (Warning, this is long so I tried to break it up into a few posts, but it is still long!)

First the Date:
Fi and I got "engaged" and I jumped right in. We knew a few things: the wedding would be in Tucson. My uncle would be involved in the ceremony (as our officiant). So that dictated a few decisions:

1. No summer months, so limiting us to October-April, cause really no one wants to travel to Tucson in July.

2. No dates around any Christian holidays (My uncle is a pastor).

We quickly narrowed it down to March and October, the two best months in Tucson (IMO). March was optimal, it would give us a year to plan and we could incorporate baseball Spring Training into our festivities.

October was not so optimal. It would either give us 6 months (eek) or 18 months (ughh). Six months wasn't practical, my family was busy, my dad was finishing up his term as president of his professional organization and that wouldn't be over till early October. And EVERYTHING was already booked for 2007.

March had some openings, but Easter 2008 was smack dab in the middle of the month which put my Uncle out of commission, well, for all of March. Like not only couldn't he perform the ceremony, he wouldn't be able to come.


So we looked back to October, 2008 this time. I work for a non-profit that recognizes religious holidays. I found a few weeks in October that would allow me to get 3 weeks off for the price of 2 weeks vacation. I approached FI with the idea. He smacked it down, saying he didn't want to wait that long to get married (what, we've waited YEARS already, whats another 18 months?). So it was back to the drawing board.


So we started doing mad research on wedding venues. In Tucson, there are a bunch, because we are a "touristy" city that means lots of resorts and hotels. We had three quick favorites in terms of "resorts".



The Arizona Inn

The Arizona Inn



Hacienda del Sol

Hacienda De Sol


Westward Look

Westward Look




All have their charms, but for us those charms came with too much of an overhead. Like with Hacienda del Sol you had to book so many of the rooms to have your reception in the courtyard. And none of the packages were exactly what we wanted. Either dates weren't open or prices were astronomical, but none worked out for us. And really, a resort wedding felt funny for two kids who love dive bars and beer. So back to the drwaing board for us!