Wedding Blog

Before my first wedding, I didn’t actually know that weddings were supposed to take place on Saturdays. It never really occurred to me at all. I picked a date that worked with our schedules, and thought nothing of it until the responses to the save-the-dates started coming back:

“Did you know that’s a Thursday?”

And then I found out that People Get Married On Saturdays. Oh well.

When Mr. Mary Jane and I got engaged and started thinking about a date, I was armed with the knowledge that Saturday = Wedding. And we thought about a lot of them. 10-10-09 was one. 12-11-10 was another. 5-15-10. 6-19-10 (my parents’ anniversary). So many Saturdays to pick! Which one would it be?

But then we started to evolve our plan, and we decided to get married at a city hall. Each of our sets of parents did it, so why not? Except, courthouses aren’t open on the weekends. So a weekday, it would have to be! With such a small wedding, the amount of guest conflicts would be minimal, at least. (And aside from convenience for guests, I’m not sure why weddings are always on Saturdays.)

Including weekdays in our date-search meant a lot more possible options! There were now 5 days a week to choose from, not just one. How about 07-08-09? It was a Tuesday. Or maybe Friday, 01-01-10 (although, since it’s a holiday, the government offices would probably be closed). Ultimately, we narrowed down our date by convenience and comfort.

We both felt that the earlier 2009 summer months didn’t allow for enough planning time, but neither of us wanted to wait until 2010 to tie the knot. That left the fall of 2009. Enter school. Our fall term of classes was to resume in late August, with midterm projects and tests most likely coming due in mid-October. Since August was vetoed by me (my anniversary with my ex was in August), we decided that a date in September would be ideal.

What’s this I see? September 9, 2009? A Wednesday during the third week of classes. And what a cool date! After a little discussion over whether or not the matchy-match date was too cliché, Mr. Mary Jane and I decided that it was the one for us. We told everybody to save it and never looked back.

[source]

It didn’t really occur to me that we were choosing a famous date, but later, I read a lot of different things.

That link above provides a collection of some “9″ and “09/09/09″ trivia. A few of my favorites:

“Multiply nine by any two, three or four-digit number and the sums of those will also break down to nine. For example: 9×62 = 558; 5+5+8=18; 1+8=9.”

The date “represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we’ll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it.”

The Chinese also consider 9 to be a very lucky number (but the Japanese don’t like it!). I also found various forewarnings from Christians concerned that the triple nines could easily be inverted in to triple sixes. Some people even said they wouldn’t be going outside on this possibly ominous date. Wow! I tried not to let any of this negativity get to me, and honestly I didn’t really put a lot of weight behind the positive parts either (aside from “Hmm, that’s interesting.”).

We chose our date — which happened to be a Wednesday — because it worked for us and the numbers were neat and easy to remember. And the day turned out absolutely perfect, cloudless, and temperate. It wasn’t even windy! (That’s pretty much unheard of here in North Dakota.)

Though it turns out that we share our wedding anniversary with tens of thousands of Chinese couples, I’m happy just to share it with Mr. Mary Jane.

What considerations went in to choosing your day and date? Does your date have any good or bad cultural associations?