Does the Navy authorize leave from training to get married I'm in submarine school for the next year or so My fiancee and I want to get married in July What steps do I need to take?

Answer 1

Typically on TAD assignments, getting leave for anything isn't easy, unless it's a family emergency or you're sick - and you'd better be dying or dead. That's just due to the tight scheduling in the training pipeline - if you miss any classes, you're screwed - you of all people already know this, as all sailors do. They'll make exceptions in emergencies, but weddings aren't emergencies.

In my own case (albeit almost 29 years ago) I had finished Submarine School, BE+E, and Sonar A/C schools before my wife and I got married (she was also a sailor at the time). It was between my end of TAD and my first boat. I got 2 weeks after Groton to get back to San Diego (where Sonar school used to be), then i took 3 weeks between San Diego and Charleston to my first boat, which is when we got married.

The problem is that with TAD assignments, you typically don't get many days (maybe a 3 day weekend if you're lucky), whereas when you report to your permanent boat you'll be more flexible as far as schedule goes. If you want to do it right, schedule it during the period between when you're changing assignments from your TAD station to your boat. You usually get 2 weeks or 30 days - we had 30 days and it worked out well. If you don't do it before you get to your first boat, you won't have time to get married as you'll be too busy with quals and other training, along with in-port duty rotation (3 or 4 days, usually 3). Nugs don't get leave right off the bat when reporting to a new boat - that's why you need to take it between stations.

The problem with trying to do it over a weekend is that unless you're doing a civil ceremony (and women always want the fairy tale wedding) you have little time to do everything, and heaven help you if there's a problem that requires a postponement. Though July is a decent month, you never know if something will happen to change things. Something you might consider is doing a quickie civil ceremony to get her dependent status rolling along, then do a big wedding later on when you've got the time and a little breathing room. It took 9 months stationed on different coasts before we could get married, and then another 6 months before she was able to transfer to Charleston with me. We were lucky we had good detailers who cared - not everyone was as fortunate.

You can also check with your detailer to find out exactly how much leave you're going to get. Your LPO and CO isn't going to know you're particular schedule, but your detailer will - all training for sailors is planned very carefully (I know - I used to write the schedules at the Pentagon when I was at CNO), and if you miss classes for any reason other than sickness or an emergency, you run the risk of really messing up your career before it starts.