Originally Posted by ft101

I've done similar to this in the past when I've called them pre-booking, described my predicament and had them agree to put a note on the ticket that I would get one free date change for when my preferred return date opened up.

It was a few years ago and I can't recall all the details but it was for similar reasons to you that I wanted to grab cheaper fares on their release for peak dates on the outbound before they were all gone.