Choosing your wedding or event date in the New York/New Jersey Area

Most of us, when we plan an event, especially something as important as a wedding start in the most familiar of areas, our personal opinions. Are they interested in a wedding based on the time of year (fall or summer?), theme (beach or December holidays), and the ever popular use of a ‘special day’ that already exists (the day we met, our first date, etc.) Beyond this the factors that further stipulate the date are availabilities of the church of choice, hall of choice or even vendor of choice. And then after this they have a date they are happy with and work from there.

Rarely do I find people who put further thought into their wedding date then the above mentioned, but I’m here to really draw attention to the reality of living where we live. The New York Metropolitan Area, encapsulating New York City, New Jersey, Long Island and lower Connecticut, is riddled with a busy event schedule. And this coming weekend reminded me of it. Remarkably, on Sunday we are free. No weddings, sweet 16’s or other respective events. When this comes about we usually front load a number of meetings to accommodate the schedules of our potential clients. One of these clients was coming from Brooklyn. It really is quite an easy trek to our location from New York City. When there isn’t traffic (and yes, there are times when there is light to no traffic in the region) we are no more then 20-30 minutes from many places in the city and outer boroughs. We had made plans to have them come out and then I looked at a notation in my calendar.

New York City Marathon

I generally place notations like this on the calendar for our information as these will provoke severe delays in travel. The NYC Marathon, of course, leads to a large number of street closures. Traveling by car is a disaster throughout many parts of the city on such days. So I moved the meeting to another time that would prevent our clients from dealing with delays. I wonder though, how many people made plans for their wedding on Sunday without looking at the calendar or taking into account the mayhem that the marathon could provoke on their day.

We look at the calendar most every weekend because there are so many events around this area. Bicycle tours, walks, marathons, street fairs, parades and any number of sporting events for the multiple baseball (major & minor), football, hockey, basketball, etc. teams within this area. All these have a significant effect on travel. Colorblind Productions takes initiative to know what is going on not only in the area of the wedding but beyond that, en route to the location. Our personal quest is to really prevent our delay in arrival. I can guarantee you that not all brides, grooms or event planners take this into account.

So this is my plea - make sure to really take into account these things in your day so you can make adjustments as necessary. Maybe not necessarily to your wedding date itself, but it will give you the information you need to provide a brief notation to your directions explaining to your guests that said and said is happening and there may be delays. Take into account construction projects that might affect the travel date as well. With luck there will be no issues to deal with, but similarly, you’ll save yourself the additional worry to find out too late in the process, that you planned your wedding or event on Superbowl Sunday.