Which Option to Choose to Still Get What WE Want?

After the shock wore off, and we were able to think clearly – meaning past the emotional disappointment of not having things work out the way you had it all planned – we looked at the situation from a step removed.

It was important for us to acknowledge that things weren’t going to be what we wanted originally, unless something changed. I mean, let’s be honest. When things don’t work out and you fall back to Plan B, something has to give. So, we quit dwelling on what wouldn’t work and started looking at what would work. What could we change in our plans to still get us the wedding that we wanted?

From my perspective, there were several options open to us:
1. Change the Venue – maybe do some research into another facility - one of our runners up. Maybe they would have some availability still in October that TOT didn’t have.
2. Change the Day – not just picking a different date, but look into doing a Friday or Sunday wedding. That opened up the calendar back at the Tejas Hall at TOT.
3. Change the Date COMPLETELY – go with an all new time frame period. Look at getting married around holidays to make the Friday/Sunday option work for us, in a different season all together so that the weddings don’t collide.
4. Change the Hall at TOT – the smaller hall, Redbud Hall, had every Saturday in October open for rental, but Mr. CC didn’t like this hall as much as the Tejas Hall.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really excited about option #1. I didn’t want to choose another venue, I LIKED TOT. And the difficulties of being about 9 months out from the proposed wedding date at other popular choices in the Austin area would present with the same problem – they would already be booked. Which meant that I would have to go off of the beaten path a little bit to find somewhere else that WAS still available, and to be perfectly honest, I had spent countless hours doing this research months earlier and didn’t jump at the thought of starting over on it all.

Option #2 didn’t appeal to me either. I liked the fact that the wedding could cost less, since the rental rates for Fridays/Sundays are generally cheaper, and the practical side of my nature really liked that! But it presented a logistical problem for me specifically. My family and most of my friends that will be invited all live out of town. And not just like an hour or two away, they’re all at least 3 ½ hours away, some closer to 4 ½ hours away from the greater Austin area. Mr. CC’s family all live within the metro area of Austin for the most part, and only a few friends would make making the trek in from out of state, so it didn’t matter to them what day of the week we picked since for them it would mean several days off of work anyway. But for me, asking my family and friends to take not just one day off of work, but not TWO days off of work was just more than I could imagine. I know that they would probably be here no matter what day I chose, but I’d like to make the decision to attend as easy as possible for them – which means sticking to a Saturday.

I actually liked option #3. I decided that the Sunday before Memorial Day would be a fabulous time to do a wedding. It would be on a Sunday (cheaper rates) and the next day was a holiday for most people, so no worries about missing work for my traveling family and friends. The down sides to us picking that time were plenty, though. It was REALLY soon, for one thing, and my work schedule is jammed packed up through the end of April. (One small dilemma.) The end of May in Texas is just hot and sticky and can be completely uncomfortable. Mr. CC wasn’t thrilled about a tux/suit in the heat of May, and this was I think the driving force behind his dislike of my winner of an idea…

That really leaves us with only option #4. I didn’t want to be the one to suggest this to Mr. CC, though. I had already dealt with things not going the way that I had planned in my head, and didn’t want Mr. CC to have to do a similar thing. He really LOVED Tejas Hall, so me asking him to go to the smaller Hall which he walked into and immediately said NO, was just more than I could ask of a fiancé. This wedding isn’t just about me and what I want, but about us and what WE envision for the ceremony that marks the start of our life together. So I couldn’t ask that of him.

I did come up with one other solution, but the planning involved in it would have been SO tricky and convoluted that we didn’t consider it long. I considered booking the weekend before their wedding (Nov 7th) at the Tejas Hall that Mr. CC loved so much and then making our honeymoon be somewhere on the West Coast. That way, on our way “home” we could make a stop in Southern California for our friends wedding. Seems like a good solution right? Right. Until you consider the logistics behind all of that, and not knowing yet when they need the best man there, and if they would be able to attend an out-of-town wedding the week before their wedding. Not to mention that would mean that not only was our wedding planned around their wedding, but that would extend into our honeymoon time as well, and it might be cut short due to obligations for Mr. CC’s friends’ wedding. So that option was quickly ruled out as well.

I mean, really, what’s a girl to do? Were there other options out there that I might have overlooked in my haste to get something decided before those dates were booked too?