Engaged Couple Slammed for Inviting Guests to an “Unreasonable” 5.30am Wedding
Just because you love the sunrise doesn't mean your family do!
We have included third party products to help you navigate and enjoy life’s biggest moments. Purchases made through links on this page may earn us a commission.
Weddings often require some sacrifice: spending a night away from home, travelling, buying a new outfit and a gift, even taking a day off work. But you do it because you love the couple and it’s their special day, right?
However one engaged couple have invoked the fury of their family by asking them to attend a wedding with the “unreasonable” start time of 5.30am – that would also take them an hour to travel to.
The confused groom turned to Reddit to ask for advice as neither he nor his fiancée could work out what the problem was with their sunrise wedding.
He explained: “Every year on our anniversary, my fiance and I wake up early to go to the beach and watch the sunrise together. It’s a very special tradition, as we have both overcome a number of personal challenges during our time together, and the symbolism of watching a new day begin is deeply meaningful for us.”
Their plan was to incorporate this into their wedding with a ceremony on the beach and then breakfast at a beachfront restaurant. “We’ve already talked to the restaurant owner about this, who loves the idea and said he’d be happy to open early for us,” he noted, pointedly.
“Our friends and family are mostly local and should all be able to travel to the beach in under an hour, except for some extended family flying in from Canada, but that’s unavoidable,” he wrote.
The couple worked out that the rough time for the sunrise at their wedding next summer, scheduling the ceremony for 5.30am “when their should be plenty of light but the sun itself won’t be visible yet.”
“We’ve been getting a LOT of backlash from our families about this, who say this is way too early and we need to move the ceremony to a more ‘normal’ time of day. But my fiance and I don’t feel like we’re asking for anything that unreasonable,” the flummoxed groom concluded, asking for advice from the internet if they were in the wrong.
Unsurprisingly, most people were taking the family’s side that a 3am wake-up call for the wedding is simply too early.
“That’s an insane expectation to have for people. Even if they make it there people will most likely be half asleep and not able to enjoy your wedding with you,” one Reddit user wrote.
“Travel time is ‘under an hour’ plus they have to eat breakfast, and get dressed so they’ll be waking up at like 4:30 the latest. Having a bunch of tired, grumpy, wedding guests driving to the same location at 5 AM sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.”
Another pointed out it was a no-go for people with families.
“Anyone responsible for babies, elderlies, children, pets is going to find that a complete pain in the arse to do. I have a toddler and she’d be a complete psychopath (potentially during the ceremony) if we disrupted her routine that much. Could arrange a babysitter, but getting one willing to arrive at 3:30am might be tricky! So I’d probably not attend such a ceremony.”
A third user said what we were all thinking if someone we loved asked us to go to a 5.30am wedding.
“I can think of only one person in this entire world that I’d be willing to attend a 5:30 am wedding for and it’s my little brother. And the entire time he’d be getting married on the beach at sunrise, I’d be imagining how it would feel to drown him in the conveniently nearby ocean.”
The consensus on Reddit was that the couple should have a private ceremony at sunrise with the two of them and an officiant, then a celebration later for friends and family. Do you agree with this suggestion? Would you attend a 5.30am wedding?
