Basic Trope: The wedding date is pulled back due to unforseen circumstances.
- Straight: Alice and Bob get engaged. Not long afterwards, Alice finds out that she's pregnant. She doesn't want an Obvious Pregnancy at the wedding (That would be scandalous! And she wouldn't be able to fit into her Fairytale Wedding Dress!), so she and Bob have a private wedding down at the courthouse.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are betrothed to one another from early childhood, and the families were going to hold off the actual wedding until Alice and Bob turned eighteen, but then when they get to Junior High, rumors start about Alice and Bob (gasp! shock! horror!) kissing and holding hands, and in order to avoid a scandal, the families start planning the wedding right away.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob pull back their wedding date from two years out to one year out.
- Justified:
- Alice found out she's pregnant, and doesn't want the stares and whispers that would come with her being a bride with an Obvious Pregnancy. Perhaps, too, there's a great stigma towards having a child out of wedlock in her society.
- Alice and Bob are criminals (or only one of them is), and they want to invoke Spousal Privilege.
- Bob got deployed, and decided to marry Alice so she'd get military spousal benefits (including, if applicable, death benefits).
- Alice and Bob got frustrated with wedding planning (meddlesome relatives, finances, endless meetings with florists/bakers/photographers/venues/etc., and decided to just elope at the last minute instead.
- Not long after accepting Bob's proposal, Alice found out she has Soap Opera Disease. Since they aren't sure whether Alice will even be alive 12-18 months from now (when the wedding date was originally planned for), she and Bob decide to get married.
- Alice and Bob are trying to escape troublesome or abusive family circumstances.
- Alice and Bob were planning to Marry for Love, but then Alice finds out that her parents are planning to marry her off to Charles, which she doesn't want.
- Alice and Bob decided to have a longer engagement, because they just don't have the money for the kind of wedding they want. (Sure, they could just elope, but they want to include their friends and family.) But, three months after they got engaged, Bob won the lottery, and since they can now afford the wedding they want (and then some!), they decide they don't need to have the long engagement and can get married within the next year.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob planned to get married six months from now, but then hit a financial snafu, and had to put off the wedding for a couple of years.
- Alice finds out she's pregnant, and she and Bob decide to have the wedding after the baby is born.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob are dating, maybe even living together, but not engaged.
- Alice and Bob have set a date for two years from now.
- Alice finds out she's pregnant, but since the invitations (or at least save-the-dates) have already gone out, she and Bob decide not to change the wedding date.
- Alice and Bob are planning to elope now and have a big celebration (either with or without a vow renewal) five years down the road, when they have more money.
- Alice finds out she's pregnant a few months ahead of the wedding, but she has an abortion or a miscarriage, and doesn't tell anyone except Bob and her doctor.
- Alternatively, it turns out to be just a Pregnancy Scare.
- Alice and Bob have a fight, and the wedding is called off.
- Alice and Bob have to attend Pre-Cana or other pre-wedding counseling/education before they can get married.
- Double Subverted:
- One day, Alice finds out she's pregnant, and she and Bob have themselves a Shotgun Wedding (either because they feel it's the right thing to do, or because of pressure from their families/society/religious leaders/etc.)
- The date is one that's significant to them, but they couldn't have the exact year they wanted because another couple reserved the venue they wanted. One day, Alice gets a call from the wedding coordinator for that venue, telling her that the other couple have canceled their reservation, and Alice and Bob can have the room on that date.
- She and Bob (and their immediate families) have a small private wedding, and decide to make the planned wedding and reception a vow renewal instead.
- They get impatient, and decide to have the big party a lot sooner, or to have a simpler wedding.
- Then she gets pregnant again, and decides to pull back the wedding.
- They get back together, and decide to get married before they have another fight like that.
- Alice calls her family priest for advice, and he suggests they sign up for an "engagement encounter" weekend retreat instead. (There's conveniently one in two weeks!) They get their counseling/education requirements out of the way over that weekend, and are able to have the wedding before Alice's pregnancy begins to show.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob don't get married, and might not even be planning to.
- Alice and Bob's wedding plans stay exactly the same.
- Enforced: The show writers find out that they're not going to have a critical part of the planned wedding scene in a few months' time — Bob's actor finds out he needs to have surgery rather soon that will leave him unable to act for several months, Alice's actress is dying or the location they had intended to shoot the scene has been booked and bullied by a much larger and influential studio who will move in soon — and decide to write the hurry-up into the actual story with what little time they have.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice finds out she's pregnant shortly after getting engaged to Bob. She has an Imagine Spot of herself in her wedding dress, with a huge baby bump, and doesn't like what she sees.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Since the invitations (or at least the save-the-dates) have already gone out, and the venue has already been booked, Alice decides to go through with the wedding as planned, no matter what anyone else thinks. She calls up the bridal salon where she bought her dress to let them know she's pregnant, and books some extra fittings and has the bridal salon tailor her dress to accommodate her growing belly.
- Alice and Bob decide to have the wedding after the baby is born.
- Alice has an abortion, so the issue is moot.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Altar the Speed
