Day: October 2, 2025

Simone Migliori liked the idea of an October wedding so much she had two — a backyard elopement in 2023 and a bigger bash in 2024. Part of the decision, at least on wedding No. 1, was that it was the anniversary of when Migliori, 27, and her husband first met. But it was also because she’s always wanted to get married in the fall. Both events were held in Massachusetts, and she loves the color palette and the cooler weather at that time of year. Plus, Taylor Swift has a fall aesthetic, and there’s the Pumpkin Spice Latte. “I feel like Fall is the ‘it girl,'” she says.

Her assessment is correct: When it comes to weddings, October is the hot way to go. Adieu to June.

The wedding website The Knot’s 2025 global wedding report found that October is the most popular month in the United States to wed, as it has been since 2019. Data from Zola, another wedding planning website, shows October has been scrapping it out with June and September for the top nuptial month for at least the past decade.

“Weddings, for some time, have been in the fall, and, kind of, the conversation has finally shifted to acknowledging they’re in the fall,” says Emily Forrest, a Zola spokesperson. She got married in October nine years ago, thinking she was going against the grain by eschewing the spring and summer months. “I wanted to do something a bit different,” she says. “It turns out that’s pretty common.”

It’s sort of like the trend five years ago when everyone named their babies Olivia and Liam, thinking it was distinctive, only to discover on the first day of kindergarten that everyone else had the same idea. October weddings are the Sophias of marriage — beautiful, beloved, and maybe not so unusual anymore.

The June bride tradition dates back to ancient Rome and Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth. It stuck around in the Middle Ages because flowers were prettier at the start of summer (and could help mask some smells), and it didn’t hurt that it lined up with agricultural calendars, between planting and harvest. It continued into the modern era, too, including in popular culture. The 1954 musical film “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” has a song called “June Bride.” In 2009’s “Bride Wars,” Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway duke it out because both dreamed of getting married in New York’s Plaza Hotel in June.

October weddings are the Sophias of marriage — beautiful, beloved, and maybe not so unusual anymore.

June is still a popular month to get married, but a cascade of climate, logistical, and aesthetic factors has many couples increasingly looking to the fall months. Jove Meyer, a wedding planner in New York City, puts it plainly: While some couples may want to get married in June, “there’s only four weekends” in the month. And July and August are going to be too hot for many people to opt for them.

“July is just miserable to work in, and I can’t imagine being a bride in a full gown and the guys in a suit and jacket outside,” says Megan Niger, a wedding photographer based in Connecticut.

The next best thing used to be September, but now, especially with global warming, people are realizing that “you can have a gorgeous October wedding,” Meyer says. “It’s not winter. It’s extended-late summer, depending on when in October you get married.”

“We see a lot more stability in October,” says Mandy Connor, the owner of Hummingbird Events & Design in Boston. “If you’re a bride or groom who doesn’t like to sweat on their wedding day, October is a perfect timeframe for you.”

Ideally, it will be warm during the day and cool off at night as people start dancing. And if it does get a little too nippy, there are a lot of decor elements, such as firepits and blankets, to incorporate.

That weather stability translates to scheduling stability, too. In the late spring and early summer months, it’s hard to find a weekend that works for all the guests: School is ending, there are a lot of graduations and other competing events, and many families are setting out on their summer vacations. Depending on the locale, wedding attendees may find themselves competing with tourists in the summer months, driving up the price of airfares and hotel rooms.

“People are ready to celebrate by October,” says Lauren Kay, the executive editor of The Knot. “You’re like: ‘It’s been a minute since I’ve taken a vacation. Sure, I’m going to go to your destination wedding or go party with you.'”

With the rise of the fall wedding, the entire wedding calendar has shifted to accommodate. The spring is more of a wedding shower season, the summer for bachelor and bachelorette parties, and the fall for the actual big day. (Engagements have long been and remain most popular in December, around the holidays, because families and friends are around and it’s got a festive feel.)

Also, to state the obvious: Fall is pretty. In many parts of the country, leaves are changing and falling, providing what many couples believe is an ideal backdrop for their celebrations, especially if it’s outdoors.

Hannah Gettleman, 35, landed on October 26 for her nuptials in Chicago. The ceremony and reception will be indoors, but the photos and a cocktail hour will be outside, God (and weather) willing. “I love fall in Chicago. It’s the Midwest, it’s by some leaves, and I just love the vibrancy of the fall in and of itself,” she says. “There are a couple of parks that we want to check out that are near the venue, so we definitely want to get the fall foliage in our photography.”

Couples who want to marry during Spooky Season are going to encounter some spooky levels of competition.

To be sure, solid weather isn’t guaranteed at any time of the year in any part of the world. Take it from Cameron Ruby, 33, whose San Francisco wedding was in October 2021. She and her now-husband had originally planned to get hitched in March of 2021, but they pushed it back. “The impetus behind choosing October was that in San Francisco, it tends to be, historically, the best weather of the year,” she says. But there was an atmospheric river, which caused huge amounts of rain. Guests’ flights were canceled and delayed. Ruby’s dress got so muddy that no dry cleaner would take it. “You cannot predict the weather,” she says.

October becoming a sought-after wedding month means it’s getting sought-after prices, too. The Knot’s data shows the average wedding cost in the US is already an eye-popping $33,000.

Meyer says October used to be more of a “shoulder season,” tucked between the high and low seasons, and therefore could be more affordable. But that’s changing. “It may not be a shoulder season for long,” he says.

Couples who want to marry during Spooky Season are going to encounter some spooky levels of competition, which means they may have to book a year or two in advance.

“Everybody sort of clamors for them, and you’ll see people say, ‘I know I want September, October, but …'” says Susan Norcross, who owns The Styled Bride in Philadelphia. The hot date for next year is not quite October but instead September 26, she says, because people want to do 9/26/26.

Vendors and venues can get away with charging more amid higher demand in the fall, though prices aren’t just season-dependent; they’re also day-dependent. If you want to do your wedding on the cheap, your best bet may be picking, say, a Thursday or Friday, whatever the month. And if you’re going after the coveted October, being open to an off day gives you a better shot at landing a date.

Couples are being very purposeful about planning their weddings nowadays. Every detail has meaning. They’re embracing some traditions and eschewing others. Many are also getting married after being together for a long time, so they’ve pored over every detail. It turns out a lot of them have concluded they want to wed in October.

For guests, it’s nice in that the fall really is less packed, schedule-wise (football fans excepted), and it’s not a bad deal to space out wedding season. But it also means you should probably check your calendar — you might have more weddings on there than you’d think.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Col. Amy Nieman, a senior JAG officer stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was scrolling through reactions to the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk when she decided she needed a break from social media.

“Signing off for awhile. Facebook is just too awful a reminder of where we find ourselves,” she wrote in a post, which was visible only to her friends on Facebook. “Awful to see the number of people who say this is the fault of one side and in no way related to the proliferation of guns or the devolution of political discourse.”

Soon, Nieman’s private musings ended up in the hands of Sam Shoemate — an Army veteran whose X account has been a clearinghouse for leaks purporting to expose troops and military personnel he calls out as “woke.”

In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, Shoemate has posted separately about a dozen people tied to the military. Nieman, a 24-year Army veteran and a senior lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, was his most prominent target.

Shoemate published a screenshot of her post to X, along with a message he said was from his anonymous tipster: “Team Woke is still holding the levers.”

Things escalated quickly. The address of Nieman’s home, where she lives with her husband, Seth, and two kids, briefly appeared in posts on X before they were taken down. Within days, Amy Nieman was suspended from her position as the staff judge advocate of the Army’s prestigious 101st Airborne Division.

The reactions shocked the Niemans. “We’re not liberals. That’s what I think is so laughable about some of this,” says Seth Nieman, a retired Army Special Forces major. “Nothing Amy said was hateful.”

What happened to Nieman is part of a broader crusade against so-called “woke” ideology in the military. Active-duty troops stationed at bases across the country say the effort has helped unleash a free-for-all of leaks and accusations, feeding an atmosphere of intense suspicion.

Screenshots of internal Defense Department emails, policies, images from military bases, private messages, and old social media posts, dredged up by a loose army of veterans and online sleuths and targeting troops of all ranks, now regularly pop up on X.

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, the administration has fired more than a dozen high-ranking officials, including the top JAG officer in both the Army and the Air Force, often with little or no explanation. Five are women.

Conservative groups, as well as independent posters like Shoemate, have circulated lists of dozens of “woke” troops they believe should be dismissed.

“Some people need to hang to restore justice,” Shoemate posted to X in April, responding to a post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the military’s support for service members ousted for refusing to get COVID vaccines during the pandemic. “That’s not hyperbole.”

Hegseth made it clear this week that, in his view, the future of the military is the past. In a speech to hundreds of generals and admirals on Tuesday, he announced a “1990 test,” where American troops would be held to the “highest male standard” and any changes to military standards in the last 35 years will be reviewed.

The White House says its rollback has boosted morale and contributed to a surge in recruitment. In a statement to Business Insider, Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said that pre-Trump policies “such as reducing fitness requirements and forcing woke ideology” had “hindered readiness.”

Just as in corporate America, change in the military hasn’t always been universally welcomed. There were surely service members in the past who silently chafed at policies they believed were too progressive.

Senior leaders are “very wary of honest give and take. The folks on active duty are paralyzed.”

Some troops and military experts believe what’s happening now goes well beyond the typical course of institutional change.

Twenty-four active duty and recently retired troops who spoke to Business Insider, including generals, military lawyers, and junior and senior officers, say the administration’s actions have stirred up paranoia and challenged the uniformed service’s nonpartisan ethos.

Military lawyers say they’re so alarmed by the leaks coming from their offices that they avoid sending emails, while others say they have distanced themselves from past accomplishments for fear of being tied to programs that are now unpopular.

“Everyone is on eggshells,” says Dan Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and associate law professor at Ohio Northern University. “To me, it’s like ‘1984’ where neighbors are turning in neighbors for supposed violations of thought crime.”

A US Army general says he found recordings of his own meetings posted online.

“People are recording the mundane, bureaucratic operations of the military in hopes that someone will say something that can be painted in a light that they’ve somehow stepped out of bounds,” says the retired general, who, like other current and recent service members, requested anonymity to speak openly. “I think that makes senior leaders very wary of honest give and take. The folks on active duty are paralyzed.”

A three-star officer says he now checks his email first thing every morning “to see if I still have a job” — or if statements he made in support of diversity or the COVID vaccine mandate, back when those things were official military policy, have come back to haunt him.

People are too scared to even engage in conversations about what is happening. We just don’t trust each other.”

If targets keep their jobs, many are hit with waves of online harassment for having carried out their duties under previous administrations or, fairly or not, exercising free speech in a way that runs counter to, or annoys, the MAGA faithful.

The accusations have spread to much lower-ranking officers and enlisted troops. Among those dragged online are a staff sergeant whose email signature included her pronouns and a lieutenant who wrote a letter defending women’s submarine service.

“I’ve never seen a group get together and say, ‘I don’t agree with the policy positions of a certain administration, so I’m going to smear every officer who carried out those policies,'” says Brad Duplessis, a professor at the Army’s Command and General Staff College who retired from the Army in 2021. “I’ve never seen an ideological movement like this on the left or the right until now.”

Many of the anti-woke posters are among the 8,000 vaccine refusers who were forced from the military under President Joe Biden’s 2021 mandate. The Pentagon rescinded the mandate in 2023 after Congress repealed it, with Republicans arguing the mandate hurt recruiting and lacked reasonable exemptions. The Trump administration has encouraged the troops who were fired to return to the military with back pay; about 1% have taken them up on the offer.

JAGs like Nieman have come under particular scrutiny for their professional role in the vaccine mandate and DEI programs. Dozens have been doxxed or targeted online.

Several of these military lawyers say there have been so many leaks of emails, documents, and group chats that they now favor in-person meetings to discuss sensitive topics.

“People are too scared to even engage in conversations about what is happening,” says one active-duty JAG. “We just don’t trust each other.”

It’s unclear if the Department of Defense is investigating who is behind the leaks. The JAG says they’ve seen no evidence that they are, and the DoD declined to comment.

“We know they are still out there,” the JAG says of the leakers.

It’s ultimately up to civilian leaders to determine military policy, whether about diversity or vaccine requirements. Experts warn that targeting military officers who followed those policies and encouraging the military’s rank and file to weigh in could set a dangerous precedent.

“If everybody has this free rein to express political grievances down to the lowest private — and their squad leader doesn’t like that — then that’s going to drive them apart,” says Luke Baumgartner, a fellow researching extremism at George Washington University who served as an Army officer. “It’s mission first. It’s not politics first.”

The leaks and public accusations are increasingly attracting the attention of top Pentagon officials.

On September 3, Hegseth and Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, hosted a listening session at the Pentagon with some of the most prominent of the anti-woke figures operating online. Among them was Shoemate, the veteran who would post about Nieman about a week later. (Shoemate declined a request for an interview.)

Following Hegseth’s listening session, the number of posts and the variety of targets markedly increased.

The next day, another veteran in attendance at the Pentagon posted a screenshot of a US Navy doctor’s LinkedIn profile where she listed her pronouns and described her specialty as “transgender healthcare.” The post was picked up by Libs of TikTok, the popular right-wing account, who tagged Hegseth, writing: “Can you please look into this?”

“Pronouns UPDATED: She/Her/Fired,” Hegseth replied.

Trump has also welcomed high-profile critics of previous administrations back into the fold, including some who were disciplined for speaking out against military policies.

Matthew Lohmeier, a former Space Force commander and F-15 pilot, serves as Trump’s undersecretary of the Air Force, overseeing roughly 700,000 people and an annual budget of $220 billion.

Lohmeier was fired from command in the Space Force in 2021 after self-publishing a book about the spread of Marxism in the American military and criticizing its DEI policies in interviews. Lohmeier later served as a vice president at Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, an anti-DEI nonprofit.

After attending a Trump campaign rally last fall, Lohmeier urged troops to gather training documents and emails that demonstrated the “pro LGBTQ agenda, pro trans, pro anti-white racism, anti-Americanism.”

“We will ensure we eliminate this rot from the military,” he wrote on X. “Capture the evidence.”

Lohmeier, who declined requests for comment, has kept a relatively low profile since his confirmation in July. Shortly after Kirk’s death, when a user on X flagged that a senior enlisted airman had called Kirk “a POS who spread hate,” Lohmeier sprang into action.

“I’ve asked our senior military leaders to read the member his rights, and place him and his entire chain of command under investigation,” Lohmeier said on X. “Zero tolerance for this.”

In April, the popular Facebook account US Army W.T.F! moments posted a photo from Fort McCoy, a training base in Wisconsin. Portraits of Trump and Hegseth had been turned around on a wall displaying the chain of command. “Fort McCoy just playing with fire,” the caption read.

The outrage was immediate, and spilled over onto X, where users began speculating about who might be responsible. Several prominent accounts — citing no evidence — named Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez, the garrison commander and a 26-year Army veteran, as a likely culprit. The first woman to hold the position, Baez Ramirez was soon being branded online as a “DEI plant.”

Within days, the Army announced Baez Ramirez had been suspended for unspecified “administrative reasons.” Her suspension fed another round of shaming, as social media users dug into her background and previous statements.

Baez Ramirez was quietly reinstated to her post in mid-August. She declined a request for comment.

Chris Hanson, the director of public affairs for the 88th Readiness Division at Fort McCoy, declined to elaborate on the reason for Baez Ramirez’s suspension but says she was never under investigation for the command board incident.

“Unfortunately, there are people across the political spectrum that are getting dragged through the mud right now,” he tells Business Insider. “Our focus is to make sure that we’re maintaining the truth. And the truth is that she wasn’t associated with the command board.”

Meanwhile, tensions over the leaks and accusations have crept into the most banal interactions among the operational force.

An Army major was recently planning a field exercise when a question from a junior officer caught him off guard. The lieutenant wanted to know whether a “DEI” advisor would be included in the head count.

The question itself wasn’t unusual, but the lieutenant’s reference to “DEI” landed like a verbal grenade.

The major’s immediate thought was that it might be a trap — that his response would be reported up the chain or leaked to someone online, who’d use it to brand him as “woke” and endanger his decade-long career.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever had to think about that,” the major says.

The troops and military experts who spoke to Business Insider say they were most concerned that the military’s men and women could start being judged by their politics rather than their effectiveness in their roles.

“We actually need people who are good at fighting and winning wars,” says Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a new history of the US military’s relations with civilian leaders.

“The right answer,” Schake says, “is for the military to have no politics at all.”

Sam Fellman is the deputy editor of Business Insider’s military and defense team