Time to go

This is what we have been waiting two years for, time to go to Vietnam and pick up our daughter. The travel meeting today packed in a lot of information, but the most pressing question we had was "when are we leaving?" That is complicated and I will try to explain the scenarios. The first thing we did after the meeting was to rush home and Fed Ex our visa applications to our courier in DC for expedited service, which is 2-3 business days. Our giving and receiving ceremony has not been set yet. It will either be Mon, Sept 29, or Mon, Oct 6. The trip itinerary has been whittled down to 1 week with expedited services and a lot of rushing around. This might sound good to people that are squeamish about travel to undeveloped countries. But we wanted more time to learn about the birthplace of our daughter. So we are planning to go early. Instead of leaving on a Thurs or Fri, we will leave on a Tue or Wed. There is a bit of a gamble here. We may have less than a week notice of the final date of the G&R ceremony, and we have to be in the country at least 2 days ahead of time. So what do we do? Scenario 1 is to book tickets for Sept 23 and run the risk we could be there over a week ahead of time if the G&R gets pushed to Oct 6. Scenario 2, we wait until everything is 100% scheduled, then buy tickets at the last minute, and run the risk of bad flights and no time for sight-seeing before the G&R. We will mull it over this weekend, then call the travel agent on Monday.