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“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God …”
Ref, are you blind?!
“Marriage is a sacred and joyous covenant, which should be entered into reverently …”
We’re never entering the end zone …
“Marriage has been guarded and esteemed through the ages for the stability and happiness it brings to the individual, the family and the community …”
This esteemed DB can’t guard any individual …
“The uniting of these two people in heart, body and mind is an occasion of great significance, which we can all celebrate …”
Yes! Touchdown! War Eagle!
The three pillars of autumn in America are the colors of fall foliage, the traditional colors of one’s chosen college football allegiance and the colors of bridesmaids dresses, bow ties and bridal gowns. For as surely as the sun shall rise and set on October Saturdays, those days shall be packed with the shifting hues of the trees around us, incredibly crucial midseason college football contests with immeasurable postseason impact, and yes, more weddings taking place in more venues than at any other time of year.
Forget Texas vs. Oklahoma, or even Republicans vs. Democrats. Because at this time of year the greatest divide in this great nation of ours is about event plans that collide like Jadeveon Clowney hitting a running back in the Outback Bowl.
Fall weddings vs. college football.
As this season hits mid-October and Week 7, every game matters much more than they have all autumn long. Those teams with College Football Playoff hopes can’t afford another loss (we’re looking at you, Alabama, playing at Missouri, and LSU, hosting South Carolina) and we have also officially entered the six-win vs. six-loss bowl eligibility-or-not stanza of the fall.
But all of that potentially season-altering stuff is happening at the exact same time as thousands of life-altering stuffs are coming down aisles from coast to coast.
“This is a test of true loves,” Clemson coach and admitted wedding reception dance enthusiast Dabo Swinney said when asked this summer about those Saturdays when exchanging the possessions of two hearts conflicts with exchanging possessions of the football. “She or he might be the love of your life now. But for that groom or that bride who has a Clemson tiger paw tattoo, they have loved this team longer than they have loved them, probably. Listen, marriage is all about compromise. You’re going to get married in the fall around here? Well, you’re jumping right into that lesson about compromise right off the bat!”
“I know this. You’re going to find out who in your family actually loves you,” added Missouri head coach Eliah Drinkwitz, father of four (potential) future brides. “Because if you’re getting married on an Alabama game weekend, I’m betting that one uncle who named his dogs Bear and Saban, he’s probably not coming.”
Herein lies the rub play
According to the annual report of wedding hub website The Knot, this Saturday, Oct. 11, is the third-most-popular wedding date of 2025, ranking behind only Sept. 20 and Oct. 25. In fact, the top five are all fall dates, the one September Saturday joined by all four in October. During her research, Knot Worldwide associate editor Chapelle Johnson discovered that this all represents a significant audible when it comes to booking nuptials. Fall didn’t rise to the top of the matrimonial timetable until 2015, when it overtook summertime as the prime time to trade rings. As recently as 2009, a whopping 41% of weddings took place between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Now that trend has shifted more than Peyton Manning changing plays pre-snap.
Why? Johnson suggests it’s because of the cooler weather and the amazing paint-brushed palette those fall leaves provide, the perfect backdrop for big outdoor events. You know, the exact same reasons those days are perfect for college football.
The fall is so alluring, in fact, that even the daughter of the face and voice of college football — Elizabeth Davis, aka Daughter of Rece — couldn’t resist the marital magic of September’s final weekend. Dad even christened the event with one of his legendary “College GameDay” show opens, written as if her alma mater was facing off against her new husband’s. At least the bride was kind enough and smart enough to book the wedding on a Sunday.
So, schedule rubs be damned, newlyweds — even those who have long been wedded to their football-playing institutions of higher learning — make it work.
“The Penn State football schedule rules the wedding planning schedule in our area,” said Kit Henshaw, general manager and partner at the Mount Nittany Overlook, a venue prized for fall weddings because it sits on the ridge of college football’s most famous mountain, looking down into Happy Valley’s pinwheel of petioles every fall. “Most people avoid Penn State football home game weekends, but lots of weddings occur on away game weekends because of the beautiful fall colors and weather.”
“We have a bride who has just scheduled her wedding for Aug. 1 for this very reason, to be ahead of the football Saturdays,” said Whitney Skipper, founder, CEO and event and design curator at Poppies and Peonies, an event planner and floral designer in Anderson, South Carolina, located in the shadow of Clemson’s Death Valley. Skipper is a Clemson alum. “For many brides, they would be taking more than one team schedule into account. But we do love fall weddings,” she said. “It is a beautiful time to celebrate, to be outside and to use florals and decor in warm, comforting colors.”
As September rolled into October and football/wedding season began their coupled march down the field, we reached out to wedding planners and venues in college towns around the country asking how it’s done, why people do it and what the biggest issues to overcome are. In the end, three prevailing problems were continually mentioned: game-day traffic in relatively small college towns, combating booked-up rooms and jacked-up rates, and yeah, getting that uncle who Coach Drink warned us about to pay attention.
“Some wedding couples do avoid Duck or Beaver game days, especially if their guests will need hotel accommodations,” said Jenni Hendricks, general manager of the River Valley Inn, one of the most coveted espousal settings in Eugene, Oregon. “I was actually in a wedding where the couple moved the ceremony time because the kickoff time changed. That said, not everyone avoids game days entirely. Some couples hope that a venue might be more available — or even more affordable — because it’s competing with the football crowd. It really depends on the couple and their guest list.”
The rulebook
When that guest list is the football crowd, even those couples who might not be the biggest college football aficionados learn to lean into the spirit of the game instead of fighting it. A fall equinox etiquette has emerged, written out in bridal magazines and even publications such as the monthly bible of SEC/ACC country, Southern Living.
It was one year ago that Southern Living editor Kaitlyn Yarborough, a Georgia alum living in Austin, Texas, laid out the “7 Unspoken Rules Of Having A Wedding During Football Season In The South.” She warned brides not to have their feelings hurt when they receive some declined RSVPs or if they catch those who did say yes sneaking a peek at their phones for score updates. She also suggested some theming, from a football-shaped groom’s cake and the band or DJ announcing game updates to countering a “clear no-phones rule” protocol during the ceremony by providing TVs at the reception, especially on rivalry weekends.
“We have a big group coming from Wisconsin looking to shake things up at the game this month on Saturday, after a traditional wedding ceremony on Friday evening,” explained Fiona Gledhill, the sales and event manager at River Valley Inn, looking ahead to Oregon‘s home game with Wisconsin on Oct. 25. “This couple, who both attended the University of Oregon and are proud UO Ducks fans, are looking forward to dragging the bride’s Wisconsin Badger-fanatic family over to a postnuptial tailgate and nail-biter at the lauded Autzen Stadium. To top the weekend competition off right, the losing team’s side of the family will be picking up the tab at a post-game-day brunch party.”
One of Skipper’s Clemson clients tried to do the right thing and booked a post-regular-season, closer-to-Christmas Saturday last Dec. 21. Then the Tigers made it into the CFP and their first-round game at Texas fell directly on top of the ceremony. “The wedding was at a beautiful local inn that had the game on a large TV in the lobby,” Skipper said. “We definitely had to pull some of our guests back into the event a couple of times for moments like introduction of the bride and groom. The guests were kind and agreeable, but they were definitely wanting to check the game as often as possible.”
For those who aren’t blindsided by the surprise of a postseason run, it is best to forewarn guests of the gridiron/conjugality double booking. That was the tack of Bailey Graham and Evan Howard, a pair of hardcore Tennessee fans who scheduled their 2024 ceremony for Oct. 19 at 3 p.m. in Townsend, Tennessee. That’s 33 miles from Neyland Stadium, where the Big Orange were hosting Alabama in their annual Third Saturday in October rivalry game … at 3:30 p.m.
When friends and family visited their event website page at The Knot, they were greeted with a warning that was posted just below their engagement photo and way above the actual event information.
“The day of our wedding is the same day as Tennessee vs. Alabama football.” After a reminder that that would create hotel and travel snags, they wisely added: “We will have two projectors at the venue for your viewing pleasure.”
They did indeed. And when their beloved Vols upset the hated Tide, it only added to the magic of the evening. “Everyone was freaking out,” the bride texted earlier this week from Hawai’i, where the couple was celebrating a one-year anniversary/belated honeymoon. “It was such a good game. Hopefully, we can do again in a few weeks!”
To clarify, she means beat Alabama again, not get married again. Clearly, they have that part down pretty well, texting with a mai tai in their other hand.
Love wins … and hopefully your team does, too
Banging on those who choose to be wed on the same Saturday that the home team is going to war has become a low-hanging college football internet piñata. Some have even starred in “College GameDay” features on the topic, perhaps even a particularly handsome ESPN senior writer with glasses. (See video at the top of this story.)
But full disclosure, I empathize with those who are ripped for their ritual timing because, you see, I am one of them. I married my lovely Knoxville-raised bride, whom I met when we were both students at Tennessee, on Nov. 21, 1998. We said “I do” around 6 p.m., which was just at the start of the fourth quarter of a contest between our alma mater, undefeated and pushing toward an eventual national title, and a Kentucky Wildcats team that was led by quarterback and soon-to-be-No. 1 NFL draft selection Tim Couch.
Why in the world did we do this? Because back in the day, I covered auto racing full time and we had to wait until NASCAR, aka the longest season in professional sports, finally took the checkered flag, and that wasn’t until mid-November.
My groomsmen, nearly all Tennessee grads, and I damn near missed kickoff, er, the start of the ceremony, because we were crowded around the AV club-looking TV strapped to a cart that we found in the church office and rolled into our dressing room. Then, as the wedding video reveals, mere moments after I walked back up the aisle as a married man, we all ran back down the hallway to that same room to see if the Vols had held on. They had.
Playing at the same time were No. 4 Florida and No. 5 Florida State. My future in-laws, all from Florida, weren’t happy about that. Also in action were Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. My brother and best man, a Wake grad, and all my cousins from Atlanta weren’t happy about that. East Carolina, trying to win a sixth game and perhaps receive a bowl invite, was in the middle of beating Memphis. My father, the Pirate, wasn’t happy to miss that. Pops was also a college football official, an ACC field judge, so we cost him a game assignment, not to mention the check that came with it.
It was 1998. We had no smartphones. No earbuds. No ESPN apps. We had no digital TV projectors. We only had people frantically scrolling through sports talk AM radio as they drove from the ceremony to the reception, where we had the band play “Rocky Top” while my overserved uncle gleefully clogged.
But you know what? My family still loves me. My in-laws still like me. My marriage is still going strong. And all these years later, we still laugh when we talk about me and my dudes running up and down the hallway of the church to see if Tee Martin & Co. could keep Tennessee’s undefeated season going. Tim Couch once introduced me to a Kentucky friend of his by saying, “I did McGee the favor of playing like crap against Tennessee in the first half so he wouldn’t have to get in trouble wearing a radio earpiece or something during his wedding.”
Hopefully, your wedding will always be remembered as one of the greatest days of your life. And if you love college football as much as so many of us do, then that team you’ve dedicated yourself to, a marriage in itself, has likely provided you with so many more of the dates on your greatest days list.
So, it only stands to reason that by combining the two, no matter how much of a controversial hassle it might be, it’s guaranteed to be a pretty damn perfect fall Saturday.
Even if your uncle isn’t looking.
