Fairy Tales Come True, Even on Monday

What is a bride to do when she falls in love with a reception site that is beyond her budget? Start negotiating or consider a Thursday.

When Jenny Pinzari, 28, was planning her August wedding to Adam Blotner, also 28, she fell in love with the Mountain Top Inn and Resort in Chittenden, Vt., but it was at the top end of her budget. She asked the hotel if there was any wiggle room on price.

Their answer: consider a midweek wedding. But she initially balked.

“I had to think about what was more important,” said Ms. Pinzari, of Hoboken, N.J. “Did I want to have a Saturday wedding at a place that I didn’t really love, or have a Thursday wedding at my top choice of a venue?”

In the end, the location won out, and she and Mr. Blotner are to be married on a Thursday.

While Saturday weddings remain the norm, more couples are considering midweek weddings because of the significant savings associated with them.

At Oheka Castle, a Long Island house once owned by the financier Otto Kahn, an average wedding costs $100,000, according to their marketing director, Nancy Melius. Moving the event to the middle of the week can offer savings of 30 to 50 percent.

At the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, a Saturday wedding entails a $3,500 ceremony fee, and food and beverages, including alcohol, cost about $150 a person. For a midweek wedding, the ceremony fee is cut by 50 percent and the food and beverage discount is 20 percent, according to the hotel. Throughout last year, according to Natalie Hall, a senior catering sales representative there, a wedding was held at the hotel on every day of the week except a Tuesday.

For Ashley Glenn, 25, cost was a concern when she married Gary Glenn, 43, last July on a Thursday at the Charles Krug winery in St. Helena, Calif. She said she saved about $8,000 between the site rental fee, the photographer, florist and D.J.

But did her guests resist attending a wedding on what is for most a workday?

“I really wanted a Saturday wedding to make it convenient for our guests,” said Mrs. Glenn, of Vacaville, Calif., so she first cleared the date with her family, who she said were all happy to take time off from work.

Still, some guests grumble at the inconvenience of it all.

Last summer, Cindy Dishmey, 29, of Jersey City attended her first hump-day wedding. “It was a beautiful, lavish wedding, but I had to leave early to go to work the next day, so I couldn’t enjoy the whole evening,” she said. “A lot of people cut out early and the groom was really upset.”

While budget is one of the biggest motivators behind choosing a midweek wedding, it isn’t the only one.

According to Mrs. Hall of the JW Marriott, nostalgia was behind some couples’ decisions, choosing a grandparent’s anniversary, perhaps, or leap day or some other quirky date like 12/12/12. For others, she said, military deployments have required a switch to a Monday event.

At Oheka, Ms. Melius said, “For a lot of these couples, their guests may be traveling to their summer homes on the weekend, so a Thursday wedding can accommodate that.” Other couples, she said, book midweek because of a short engagement or religious or cultural restrictions that do not allow Saturday weddings.

For some couples, it is all about doing something different and pushing the envelope, said Wayne Gurnick, who operates a Los Angeles wedding planning service bearing his name. Some, he said, are turning midweek weddings into lavish three- or even five-day events with brunches and activities.

Saving money was not the primary motivation for Mira Peck, 31, and Ron Shaffer, 44, of Dover Plains, N.Y., who were married last year on an October Monday at the B. R. Cohn Winery and Olive Oil Company in Glen Ellen, Calif. Ms. Peck didn’t set out to have a weekday wedding; she said she simply wanted an intimate destination wedding that was attached to a weekend.

“The celebration started on the Sunday with the rehearsal dinner, and we spent the rest of the week there,” she said. The couple and six of their eight guests spent time together hiking and exploring Yosemite National Park.

“I didn’t think too much of it happening on a Monday, but I guess it was surprising as a guest to receive an invite to a Monday wedding.”

Age and experience play into this trend. Some older affluent couples, who are perhaps on their second marriage, want an alternative to “the big, Saturday night ballroom wedding,” said Shelby Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village near Los Angeles. “At this point in their lives, these couples are focused on their careers or a vacation home, and they don’t necessarily want a big, over-the-top wedding,” she said.

So in 2010 the hotel started a Weddings on Weekdays package that begins at $95 a person, compared with $138 for a standard Saturday evening reception.

Mr. Gurnick said that although the biggest saving is with the site rental fee, couples may also receive additional services from other vendors, like the photographer and florist, who may not have any work lined up on, say, a Monday.

Some photographers, he said, will offer extra hours, or sometimes include a free guest book for the bride and groom that is designed using images from an engagement sitting.

For couples with small budgets but a large collection of family and friends, Mr. Gurnick said, a weekday wedding can offer an out that is both cost- and face-saving. “Some clients are planning a midweek wedding because they know a large number of people cannot attend,” he said, “so it is a way to keep numbers down.”

Source: NY Times