Hot Marital Take: Have a Winter Wedding

I want to type the phrase “faux fur stole” into Google.

By Kady Ruth Ashcraft | August 10, 2022 | 9:07pm

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A winter wedding doesn’t have to include extreme sports but it’s an option! Photo:vernonwiley (Getty Images)

Between June and October of this year I will have attended six weddings, which feels like an average amount for a 32-year-old partnered person. These are also the only weddings I will have attended in 2022. January through May, nary a marital vow reached my ears! According to research conducted by the elite bridal scientists at The Knot, 80% of all weddings took place between May and October, with the most popular months to kiss in front of your parents being June, August, and October.

My marital advice? Have a winter wedding! Yes, I am risking my journalistic reputation by writing what is essentially a fluff piece that belongs on a website called something like “To-Do’s for ‘I Do’” but this strongly held opinion must find its way into the world. (Also, for the record I spend 98% of my time on sites that would be called “To-Do’s for ‘I Do.’”)

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Let’s first look at the problem. There are too many weddings during the summer, causing them to blend together into one never-ending, hazy cha cha slide. Summer is famously a season when you want to spend as much time as possible lounging around—lounging by a pool, lounging at the beach, lounging on a sofa in an air conditioned living room. Weddings require a lot of things, none of which are lounging. Well, there is that seven-hour period between getting into bridesmaid drag and the ceremony starting where you are held hostage in a bridal suite, but that isn’t a particularly enjoyable form of lounging.

The glut of summer weddings cuts into our ability to laze and lounge. Every free moment is either spent doom scrolling through Rent the Runway for floral sundresses, booking flights, being delayed in an airport, or texting friends from college about splitting an Airbnb. None of these are bad per se—one of my favorite hobbies is doom scrolling Rent the Runway, but I ask that we space it out.

This brings me to the solution. Move some of these weddings to the winter. I want to type the phrase “faux fur stole” into Google. I dream of wearing my QVC addicted grandmother’s (RIP) costume crystal clip-on earrings with a long sleeved crushed velvet gown. Instead of a spritz, let the guests ladle themselves mulled wine from a rustic cauldron.

There are very practical reasons for a winter wedding, too. Vendors usually have super discounted off-season rates, helping trim down the average wedding cost—which is currently $28,000. You’re also a lot less likely to force guests to choose between your wedding and another. Only 2% of weddings take place in January and February. If your love is as unique as you declare it is, then have it really stand out by not scheduling it on Labor Day weekend.

I think so fondly of the one winter wedding I went to years ago. It was at the end of January, well after the stress of the holidays had tapered off. There was a lovely and warming bonfire to end the night. I didn’t have to sit in a field and get mosquito bites around my strappy sandals. One of the brides (sorry, conservatives) wore a gorgeous rabbit fur cape (sorry, vegans). It was the only event I had that month and the force with which it buoyed my seasonally depressed brain should be studied by those bridal scientists I mentioned earlier.

This suggestion of more winter weddings might not be groundbreaking, but few things about weddings are. What this take lacks in heat, it makes up for in its resounding truth. A winter wedding will, quite simply, make me route for your love more, if for no other reason than I will remember it more distinctly because I won’t pass out from heat stroke during it.