My wedding is coming up in October this year and I need 5 weeks (25 working days) of leave for completing all the wedding rituals, honeymoon, etc. My fiancé will be leaving abroad for work so I want to spend time with him and family before he leaves.
Taking leave for this long is unusual at my company. What can I do to effectively ask and/or negotiate for the time off?
In discussing the request with manager so far:
- I’ve offered to connect remotely for 10 of the 25 days
- I’ve offered to take unpaid leave instead of paid leave
- My manager hasn’t been collaborative in identifying alternatives
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1I have 20 days of total annual and casual leaves left. I'm a permanent employee so I believe I can avail my leaves or go for LOA, as I have seen my co-workers do the same. – candyculen yesterday
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2You said in your post it's 15... so do you have 20 or 15 days of your annual allowance? – nvoigt yesterday
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21Does your culture really require you to perform rituals for 5 consecutive weeks in order to get married? I have heard about some elaborate wedding rituals, but 5 weeks still seems quite extreme. No option to space that out over a couple months? – Philipp 22 hours ago
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25 weeks? Can you please clarify the culture and your country of residence? – opa 22 hours ago
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1Culture is almost certainly Indian, for those asking, or perhaps a related culture (but I'm not informed enough to be sure) – ribs2spare 20 hours ago
6 Answers
Is it too much to ask for leaves for my own wedding?!
Well, you can ask. You did. You were allowed to take the leave that is in your contract and you were denied leave that is not in your contract. You have no right to unpaid leave, the same way your employer has no right to tell you "I don't need you, I won't pay you for ten days, but you don't need to work". You have a contract that clearly states what is expected of both of you. Work for payment. Stopping to work would be just as much a breach of that contract as stopping to pay.
So you can be happy with the leave that you are entitled to according to your contract, or you can take that as an opportunity to switch jobs. But even your next job is not required to give you unpaid days off for reasons that are not a medical emergency.
How can I go about requesting an extended period off work so that I can conduct my wedding and honeymoon in the same period?
One thing that the other answers haven't touched on so far, is that the requested time off is very soon. You don't mention exact dates, but October this year is only 6 weeks away! Whilst this won't help for the current situation, the following advice may help you/others in the future.
My manager says it is impossible for him to be able to grant me so many days as there is "upcoming" work.
and
When I asked him to suggest any other alternative, he asked me to "come up with alternative dates or cut my trip short".
suggest that your boss would be willing to give you a longer than usual period of time off. However, work has already been planned as you're only giving very short notice. It is best to request time off as early as possible, as soon as you know you're going to need it, especially when it's for a longer period like you're requesting here.
The only time that an extended period of time off should be a requested for so soon, is if it's a true emergency which couldn't have been anticipated earlier. I assume you knew you were getting married before now, and have had arrangements for the wedding and honeymoon prior to today - after all, planning a wedding is a big affair.
As soon as you knew when the wedding was going to be, that's when you should have spoken to your boss about getting extended time off. Whilst it's not guaranteed that it would have been accepted, it's more likely that they would be accommodating to your request, as it gives them time to plan work around this.
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How is this a short notice? It says the wedding is in October. – Džuris 20 hours ago
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15@Džuris, for a few days or even a week off, no, this is not short notice. But to lose a team member for over a month? Yes, this is short notice for the business to make arrangements. – djs 20 hours ago
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6@Džuris it’s short notice because the notice given is almost as long as the length of time off requested. Personally, I try and give at least 3x the length of time off requested as notice, e.g. 1 week time off, give 3 weeks notice. 5 weeks off, give 15 weeks notice. Even then, that’s the absolute minimum notice I would give, and as mentioned in the answer, I’d request it as soon as I knew I needed the time off, even if it’s 12-18 months in advance. – crazyloonybin 19 hours ago
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@Džuris The dates got fixed in June. I had thought of this approach too, but i feared he would stop assigning me work altogether. I have seen this happen with one of my friends. He simply assumed she would stop coming to office after wedding. I can't risk losing work experience. – candyculen 7 hours ago
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1@candyculen: Unfortunately, second-guessing your manager's behaviour like that has lead you to your current problem. Unless you have good reason to suspect unprofessional conduct from your manager it is generally better to negotiate openly and honestly as soon as practical. However, I would agree that is not an answer that you can apply right now, as you are looking for an answer for this wedding, not another one – Neil Slater 2 hours ago
Somebody has got to say this:
Don't.
It is not part of Indian culture for every girl to have a royal wedding. Honeymoons aren't a part of Indian culture at all. I'd strongly suggest going to the finance forum and asking them how an expensive wedding will effect your life.
On top of that, you don't live in India, you live in Europe. It is not European culture either. While some europeans may take 5 weeks off at a time, most europeans consider elaborate weddings to be a sign of low class.
I married an indian girl a few years ago and there were 1,250 people at my wedding. I had never seen 1,220 of them before and I never will again. My father in law destroyed a really significant portion of his life's wealth. That will affect his ability to retire comfortably. On top of this, I ended up forking out $20,000 of my own money over three weeks to cover unexpected costs.
By the time we got back, the wedding felt more like a rape. The next year, her parents called her up and wanted an additional $10,000 because they were in debt from the wedding.
We are still married and I love my wife, but we started our lives together by stacking $100,000 in a pile and burning it. The wedding pushed back our ability to start a family because we spent our house downpayment on a big party.
Every one of my wife's friends regrets how much they spent on their weddings.
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4I think you started your answer good, but got lost in tangential details of your wedding experience. I strongly suggest you cut those details out as it does not answer the question. – DarkCygnus 18 hours ago
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4@DarkCygnus I think this answer addresses the X-Y problem. The question is "How do I get 5 weeks vacation", but could be related to another question: "Should I take 5 weeks for my wedding". The tangential details are relevant to the secondary question – Thomas Zwaagstra 18 hours ago
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4@ThomasZwaagstra ok, I respect your point of view. I think that the first paragraphs answer the question. The whole details of expensive wedding has IMHO nothing to do with if asking for 5 weeks is ok. – DarkCygnus 18 hours ago
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@DarkCygnus I see what you mean, the particular details could be reduced or removed. The general advice is to reconsider whether 5 weeks are necessary, not if the wedding should be large and expensive, etc. – Thomas Zwaagstra 18 hours ago
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1I haven't mentioned anywhere that it's going to be a big fat wedding. I require those many leaves to perform some wedding rituals which only involve in laws and parents. As he's leaving right after a few weeks, I want to be able to spend time with him. That what I require leaves for. And I don't live in Europe. I'm working in India. – candyculen 8 hours ago
Is it too much to ask for leaves for my own wedding?!
Generally not no - but 5 weeks is a rather extreme amount. Losing an employee for 5 consecutive weeks when as your boss has said there's upcoming work is majorly disruptive. Not only that but it's also exceeding your remaining holiday amount.
I asked him if he can allow me to connect from home for about 10 days. He said he thinks I won't be that effective working from home.
I have to say I'm not surprised - it's hard to imagine you'd be giving work suitable levels of attention and focus if you were working from home given the initial request was to have the time off.
I am ready for loss of pay for 10 days, since I am willing to use all my 15 remaining annual/casual leaves. He won't allow for that also.
Again.. there's work coming up, if they need you for that work then you being off on unpaid leave isn't going to change that.
he asked me to "come up with alternative dates or cut my trip short".
I think you have your answer - I think you're going to have to either modify your plans or leave (the latter feels rather excessive to me but ultimately it is an option).
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2According to anime/manga, and some testimonies, it's common (and de-facto mandatory) in Japan to resign from work if you want more than one-week vacation. – Bregalad 23 hours ago
It's hard to say, seeing as I don't know Indian laws or customs, but to me 25 days seems excessive. I'm from Denmark and I don't think anyone here would allow me 25 days of vacation back to back. Often the soft top limit is considered 3 weeks, though this is more of an unspoken rule.
I think few places would allow such a large leave in one go as it seriously hampers their production.
I don't think they are being unreasonable and I suggest you either find a job that can accommodate your needs or adjust your needs.
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4I similarly work in Denmark, and I have been employed at different companies. None of them has any issue with employees claiming 5-6 weeks of vacation at one go. I know of colleagues who have done so, and they are senior-level employees, not juniors whose presence won't be missed. – MY_G 23 hours ago
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It does sound odd compared to other Nordic countries. I've never heard of anyone being discouraged of keeping their yearly summer vacation, usually 4 weeks non-stop (with one week for Christmas or maybe winter vacation). In Finnish law, it is even illegal to force employees to have less than 2 weeks of uninterrupted vacation - and almost everyone uses 4 weeks non-stop anyway. Unless you started a new job, and haven't accumulated that many vacation days yet (2 days per month in the first year of employment). – Juha Untinen 17 hours ago
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In Denmark it is most common to have 3 weeks of summer vacation. The same applies for Denmark with the 2 weeks rule. But the law in Denmark also states that you should work with your company to find timing and lengths of vacations that doesn't interrupt the flow too much. I have primarily worked for companies with deadlines every second month and who assumes a lot of people will be out for summer vacation. So if someone took 5 weeks of vacation in say winter, it would mess the deadlines up so it usually wouldn't be possible. – Sander Skovgaard Hansen 8 hours ago
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I have seen my own colleagues from other teams taking off for 4-5 weeks. I was expecting the same from this manager, but ultimately i see that it totally depends on the individual. – candyculen 8 hours ago
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@candyculen were they taking them as part of their accumulated vacation/leave days or were they also negotiating for "unpaid/work from home" conditions? – Dan M. 3 hours ago
I had applied leave for four weeks for my sister's Marriage. I am from India. I work in a MNC with about 20000 employees in India. It was totally fine if you can handle the responsibilities.
How much sure you are about upcoming work?
If the work is just upcoming but not really on paper well planned, I
Even your team leader might not be sure about it. Marriage is one time affair mostly and 5 weeks is not critical.
Who else can support you during your absence? How well are things really planned taskwise? Who can be your proxy? How big is your team? Can you plan or train a colleague for the expected responsibility? Is it possible to attend a week of work in between and take two weeks off again in case?
Having a laptop to address something critical can always be advantageous (whether or not manager agrees for work from home). Finally, you should enjoy your life's major event and also balance work. Rules aren't played as per contract in my country (sorry for stereotyping) and it is more about professional way of dealing and finding a solution.
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Even I work in a major MNC. I have seen colleagues taking off for 4-5 weeks for their wedding. I was almost confident that my manager would be considerate. There no sign-off or formal communication of any sort from the client about the upcoming development sprint. Everyone in the team, including the lead is unsure. There are about 6 members in my team and I'm pretty sure there is no dependency on me. My role is not so indispensable, my work can be handled by other teammates too in my absence – candyculen 8 hours ago
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As per dealing it professionally, i asked him as politely as possible and in turn i asked him to suggest some other feasible alternative. He is not willing to check the dates also. I don't really know how else to approach him. – candyculen 8 hours ago
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@candyculen take your loss or find a new job. You can't always get what you want. – Pieter B 5 hours ago
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4"5 weeks is not critical" - where on earth did you get an attitude like that from? – vikingsteve 1 hour ago