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Wedding planner Anthony Navarro can’t remember another December in his 13 years in the business that has kept him as busy as this weekend. |
That’s in part because yesterday’s date was the last sequential date - 12-13-14 - for 20 years until Jan. 2, 2034.
And it fell on the most popular day of the week for weddings.
Navarro, who runs an event planning firm in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood, had three ceremonies on his plate this weekend. Compared with a typical December weekend in Chicago? “That’s huge,” he said.
Indeed, couples across the country were drawn to unusual dates like yesterday’s.
More than 13,000 weddings were registered for Saturday with David’s Bridal, according to a spokeswoman, while on the same Saturday in 2013 - 12-14-13 - the company had 6,621 events registered.
“Many couples like the idea of the numerology and think it can be good luck,” said Pamela Wallack, CEO of David’s Bridal, in an e-mail.
For others, like Claire Threlkeld who walked down the aisle at Fourth Presbyterian Church in the Gold Coast, her nuptials on the date was just happy coincidence.
Threlkeld, 29, who works in medical device sales and lives in the Gold Coast, said she scoured the 2014 calendar after her January engagement for a wedding date that included both her and her fiancee’s lucky numbers: 12 and 4. April seemed too soon, she remembers thinking, so she set her sights on Saturdays in December.
“I knew right then that we had to get married on that unique and special date,” said Threlkeld.
Sequential-numbered dates have driven date-specific wedding numbers up since at least the early 2000s, according to TheKnot.com wedding website. When Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 7-7-07 - rolled around, the site said 52,000 couples in the US married. In 2011, the most popular wedding date was Sept. 10 - 9-10-11. Wallack said that even sequential dates that don’t fall on a Saturday see an uptick in couples getting married, like Nov. 12, 2013, a Tuesday.
“For some people it’s like an extra layer of special for the two of them as a couple starting their life together,” said Navarro, who helped Threlkeld plan her wedding day. “I just think people are drawn to it because it’s something that’s different ... they don’t’ come around that often.”
Wallack said she knows of couples incorporating yesterday’s date into elements of their ceremony, including one that attempted to be named husband and wife at exactly 3:16pm so the pronouncement came on 12-13-14 at 15:16pm in military time.
Threlkeld said she and her fiance, Jon Janulis, aren’t going that far. The date worked well for them because in addition to including their lucky numbers and falling on a Saturday, it played well with Threlkeld’s love of Christmastime and the holiday lights along the Magnificent Mile.
“Everything just kind of aligned,” she said.
Janulis, 27, who works at the Chicago Board of Trade, joked that there’s another more practical reason he appreciates the memorable date.
“I should never forget the anniversary, ever,” he said. – Tribune News Service