After dating for a couple of years, your sweetie finally proposed during a scenic sunset walk. Of course, you said “Yes!” and now you’re ready to plan an amazing wedding.
Now that you’re engaged, you are more than ready to choose your wedding date. One of the many things you and your fiancé have in common is a major love for the winter holidays; you love everything to do with Christmas, and he’s a major fan of New Year’s Eve. You’re both leaning toward a late-December wedding with a festive atmosphere, but you also have a feeling that planning a wedding on or near a major holiday might be a bit of a challenge.
While there are some inherent issues that can make a late-December wedding a bit tougher to pull off, it can be done. And with the addition of holiday-themed and/or winter decorations, the entire day can be an especially beautiful affair.
Here are three tips to pull off a truly beautiful holiday wedding:
1. Send Out Save-the-Dates as Soon as Possible
The holiday season is an incredibly busy time of year, with family get-togethers, office parties, school events, and other occasions. To give your guests plenty of time to plan your wedding around other holiday traditions, consider sending out your save-the-dates about six months ahead of time.
When choosing a save-the-date card from a website like Minted.com, include a winter-themed photo of the two of you, like that great shot of the two of you building a snowman in the park. This will give your guests a visual clue about your winter wedding plans, as will the text on the card.
2. Anticipate Some Challenges
Unfortunately, there are some “cons” to getting married around the winter holidays. But, like many things in life, if you know about these challenges, you can quickly figure out ways to deal with them. For example, venues may charge more around the holidays, so you might pay a pretty penny to reserve the location of your dreams. Meantime, houses of worship might be booked for religious services and events.
By being flexible with your wedding location and paring down other costs, you can work around these issues. Travel and hotel costs can also be high around the holidays, meaning you might have fewer out-of-town guests at your wedding. Additionally, some friends and family may opt to stick with their usual holiday traditions and events.
One option to think about is a winter wedding that takes place just after the major holidays. Travel costs typically are much lower once you get past Christmas and New Year’s, and venues should be back to their regular prices as well.
3. Add Plenty of Holiday Spirit with the Decorations
If you decide on a Christmas or New Year’s wedding, you and your fiancé can have a blast choosing decorations, food, and more. Use holly, tinsel, colorful lights and ornaments as decorations for a Christmas wedding. And instead of large bouquets of flowers, opt for a pre-lit Christmas tree decorated with red and green ornaments.
Additionally, you can serve holiday-themed cocktails at your reception, opt for a gingerbread man and woman as your cake topper, and set up a photo booth with ugly Christmas sweaters and fake snow. For a New Year’s wedding, you can’t go wrong with plenty of champagne, gold and silver balloons and streamers, metallic confetti, party hats, and noisemakers.
Celebrate the Holidays and Your Wedding All at Once
If you’ve always dreamed of a holiday wedding — or you and your fiancé are major Christmas or New Year’s fanatics — by all means, go for it. By being aware of certain issues that may pop up and planning for them, letting your guests know well in advance of your plans, and then going all out with decorations and more, your wedding will be an incredibly festive and meaningful event for you and your guests.
