Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to get married midweek in term time

219 replies

Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 14:47

NC for this. I have a 10 year old DC, and have been engaged to my partner for just over a year. We have been looking at wedding venues for a few months and have found the one we want, it's perfect, special, and important to both of us.

We are on a strict budget - that's considerably higher than I would have wanted but DP has a larger family and social circle than I do so we have compromised. DP wanted to get married on a weekend but has agreed it makes sense to do it midweek for cost savings, rather than reduce the guest list any further than we already have.

The date we are looking at is early in the first week in September next year - we can't find any info on whether DC will be back at school or not by then. I've tried to work it out from previous term dates but they're not particularly consistent - sometimes the school goes back on a Weds, sometimes a Thurs, sometimes the first week in Sept, sometimes the second....

So do we book it and run the risk that our DC (and guests DCs) might have to take a day off school if the schools go back on the 1st Sept (unheard of in my experience, but it could happen) or find an extra ludicrous amount of money to do it on the weekend or in July/August? Venue is fully booked for most of the rest of the year, and other venues we have found and loved are also quite full. July/Aug have a little availability left as they're the most expensive months to get married in! (I've nicknamed this the Weather Tax....)

We don't have many friends with children who it would/could inconvenience, I'm confident DC would be fine with missing a day of school to be at his parents wedding, and I've been through the venues entire years availability as they correspond with the school holiday dates and there's literally nothing else (Around £8k difference between Weds 1st Sept and Sat 4th, it's a huge difference when we are also saving for a house. I earn £20k a year, DP earns a bit more but we can't justify dropping an extra eight grand on anything, it feels obscene!)

Would appreciate any advice on this, as obviously I've never planned a wedding before and I can't move forward with anything else until we have this hurdle tackled, and it's quite stressful!

Would you take your DC out of school for a day to attend a very close friends wedding if they booked it not knowing the school term dates beforehand, or would you think we were inconsiderate for taking the risk?

Be gentle with me, I'm finding this incredibly difficult to make a decision on!

OP posts:
ScarlettBlaize · 17/02/2020 15:45

take the risk on a very early date in september that may or may not inconvenience the very very small handful of people with school age DC

Why are you asking when you totally obviously think what you're doing is fine? You obviously don't accept you're being unreasonable, so just go ahead, why waste everyone's time??

get married on a weekend in crappy weather. (both of us have different medical reasons for not wanting to be hanging around a barn in the cold or damp for hours on whats meant to be the happiest day of our lives, but it's beside the point, we aren't being dicks about it, just want to give the whole day a shot at going well)

Why do you have to get married in a barn??

1FootInTheRave · 17/02/2020 15:45

I wouldn't take kids out and dh wouldn't take annual leave either. I work shifts so no difference to me.

Mid week celebrations always feel a bit flat to me.

Original poster
Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 15:45

@ScarlettBlaize I'm not having a dress. Or a cake. Or a lot of the fucking princess accoutrements that come with a supposed dream wedding. My outfit budget is £50. You have no idea what I have or haven't done for this; I'm simply asking whether taking the risk on a potential term date would be seen as selfish. But you don't get to sit there on your high horse and think you know fuck all about my choices.

OP posts:
Notnownotneverever · 17/02/2020 15:45

A lot of schools, my DC’s school included, are going back a week or few days earlier and get a two week October half term. This is very easy to find out. Just contact your school and ask.
Regarding taking the children out of school for a friend’s wedding. Absolutely not, I wouldn’t even consider it in the first term of school. I would either attend without them or no attend. That said I would genuinely not have any spare AL to attend weekdays even if I wanted to.

Original poster
Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 15:47

Why do you have to get married in a barn?? because that's the venue. And having looked at a dozen by now, that's the one we decided we wanted. For the location, the service, the decor, the personal relationships we have with the staff there who we have known for years, the food, all of it. And the hotel up the road that we also looked at is equally inconvenient for dates. And the country manor we looked at, also doesn't have any dates. That's the thing about good wedding venues, they get pretty booked up.

OP posts:
BarbaraofSeville · 17/02/2020 15:48

YANBU to think that an early September date won't be crappy weather, assuming you're in the UK. You could get any type of weather on pretty much any day of the year.

Sadly a midweek date, term time or not is going to put a lot of people off which might find that a lot of your nearest and dearest won't be there, taking the shine off the wedding, however perfect the venue is.

Bluerussian · 17/02/2020 15:48

A lot do go back on 1st September 2021.

5zeds · 17/02/2020 15:48

Mine don’t go back till the 7th but I have to say we’d struggle with a midweek wedding. We’re paid by the hour so it would mean a drop in paid hours that month on top of the cost of travel/accommodation/clothes/food you’d probably wipe us out for the month.

richteasandcheese · 17/02/2020 15:49

Go for October - I work in the wedding industry you'd be surprised how good the weather can be for weddings then and the colours are amazing

FamilyOfAliens · 17/02/2020 15:49

he'll be going into Y6, not Y7. If it was his first couple of days at secondary school there's no way in hell I'd think about it.

So why not just do what you would do if it was his first day of Yr7?

IceCreamAndCandyfloss · 17/02/2020 15:50

Why would the weather be rubbish if you change the date to a weekend?

It’s not just the people with school aged DCs, it’s expecting others to use up annual leave or have to travel after work etc so you save money.

SkelingtonArgument · 17/02/2020 15:50

The best wedding I’ve ever been to (better than my own!) was on a Thursday last summer. Everyone had to travel but nobody moaned about it, nobody complained about it being mid week. It was fabulous and the party continued into the small hours.
Only you know how your guests will react!

SebandAlice · 17/02/2020 15:51

I wouldn’t go as I would find it very difficult to get someone to mind my kids mid week. Also both dh and I would have to take a day off work.

SE13Mummy · 17/02/2020 15:51

DH and I are both teachers, albeit in different LAs and there's every chance one or other of us would be required in school for INSET on 1st September. LA schools can't start their terms until 1st Sept but this doesn't apply to academies or private schools.

I probably wouldn't be able to attend a wedding on 1st September but unless you've got teachers amongst your friends and family, it would be fine for a wedding... but October would probably be fine too (we got married in October).

Original poster
Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 15:53

I think there's a pretty clear consensus here that I'm an asshole for even considering it. I've got work to do so I'll be back later, but I'm just getting upset reading some of these comments and I need to prioritise the work thats going to, uh, pay for the wedding, rather than try to justify myself to people who don't know anything about my choices. I didn't realise midweek was such a big deal - as I said upthread, I'm not asking my friends to do anything I wouldn't do for them (and haven't done for them in the past). People on here are so quick to try to smack others down sometimes. I'd love to have a limitless pot of money, I'd love to be more brutal about which of my friends can and can't come, I'd love to care so little about upsetting people that this whole thing doesn't worry me at all. But I'm sensitive and a bit taken aback by some of the vehemence of personal attacks here - so I'm off to work. I'll be back in a bit.

To reiterate, there's no info anywhere that the date I have in mind is or is not in term time. It's all speculative.

OP posts:
5zeds · 17/02/2020 15:53

Everyone had to travel but nobody moaned about it, nobody complained about it being mid week. I wouldn’t moan or complain but it would be very expensive.

Original poster
Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 15:53

Why would the weather be rubbish if you change the date to a weekend? - it wouldn't, but it adds thousands to the price. And we can't afford that.

OP posts:
fedup21 · 17/02/2020 15:56

Wednesday is a pain in the neck day for a wedding for your guests, though.

Even if they haven’t got far to travel, they’ll be clockwatching thinking they have to be at work the next day and the day after that.

lanthanum · 17/02/2020 15:57

The local authority may well have set dates, although individual schools may not have determined training days yet (which will come out of the authority dates). Non-authority schools may not have to keep to exactly the same terms, but I think most tend to.
Ours are up, and the first day is 1st September in 2021, but it would be a rare school that didn't have a training day on the first day, so September 1st would be reasonably safe but the rest wouldn't. If you have any teachers among your friends, bear in mind that they are unlikely to be able to attend.

Original poster
Frazzmatazz · 17/02/2020 15:57

Go for October - I work in the wedding industry you'd be surprised how good the weather can be for weddings then and the colours are amazing - I don't think they had any Oct weekends available but I can ask again with this in mind. We do both have to be careful about weather though, DP is very susceptible to cold from childhood pneumonia and generally weak lungs/respiratory issues, I have a chronic illness that means I literally can't walk at all when the damp weather gets to my joints. I use crutches and/or a stick most of the time from late Autumn to early Spring. We're not being precious about it, we genuinely don't want to make ourselves ill! So the weather does matter a lot, and not just for pretty photos...

OP posts:
IceCreamAndCandyfloss · 17/02/2020 15:58

It’s not about money, plenty of places more expensive than barns.

If you care about which people attend and don’t want to upset people like you say then surely it’s common sense to stay local to the majority of guests and hold on a day they are least likely to be in work.

It being term time or not wouldn’t bother me but I’d not use leave to attend a wedding.

EuroMillionsWinner · 17/02/2020 15:58

The thing is, you're placing the venue above all else. That's fine as long as you realise that some guests can't or won't be able to come. A lot of people don't get paid for time off, have their leave already committed elsewhere, can't afford to travel and spend the night all so you can have the perfect venue. If you're okay with that, crack on. But every wedding I've been to where the venue was the all-important thing has been shit - the money all went on that and not on the rest of the wedding.

ThisIsBigMoon · 17/02/2020 15:58

If you can’t afford it you either make different choices or accept that it will be hard/impossible for some people to be there, and your DC class teacher will say it is a poor start to an important year. It is up to you, but if you choose mid week you have to accept that others have a different opinion.

RevisibleElephant · 17/02/2020 15:59

Just looked at our term dates for 2021 and it's listed as the inset day on 31st August which means we'll probably be back on 1st September.

AliciaMayEmory · 17/02/2020 15:59

I don’t think YABU, but here in Leicestershire schools open during the last week of August and checking the website for 2021 schools open on mon 23rd Aug (but that is an inset day along with the day after), so children from that area would definitely be back at school along with and teacher parents. If that doesn’t apply to any of your guests then go for it.