One of the first and most important thing a couple has to decide on when planning a wedding is THE DATE. For me, that was the key to my continued happiness with… my mother. I have been cautiously warned by my sister (who got married 2 years ago) if there was anything she can replan, it was her date. Let me explain. She and her husband had picked the Fourth of July to join in matrimony. However, my mom was adamantly against that date because it was not an auspicious date. So now, everytime there is a small mishap in their household (like the toilet clogging) or some misunderstanding between husband and wife, my mother would remind my sister that its because she didn’t get married on an “auspicious” day.
So what are auspicious dates, where do they come from and how do we pick one?
Auspicious dates are precasted in the Chinese almanac call the Tong Shu, which a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years. This book was very popular among Chinese families since the Qing dynasty, but not so well known to younger generations nowadays. Other than the almanac, these dates are also printed on traditional Chinese calendars. My parents usually get them from Chinese grocery stores around the new year. For more traditional Chinese families, they would take the groom’s and bride’s dates of birth and times to a master. The master will than calculate a lucky day for the couple.
So after some review of the Chinese calendar with my parents, we picked out a few dates in the Fall of 2009 that fell on a Saturday. We started to venue search with these dates and came back extremely disappointed. Most of the venues have already been booked since it was less than a year away. So we went back and forth from the calendar to venues, and the final date turned out to be Friday, August 28th, 2009. It was glorious for a few reasons:
1. It was an auspicious date, which GT’s grandmother pointed out when we first mentioned it to her. I wonder if she memorized all the auspicious dates ever since our engagment. So both sides of the families were extremely happy.
2. The weather should be cooler by the end of summer.
3. We were able to negotiate a lot more with the caterer since it was a “non Saturday” event.
Bear in mind that although auspicious dates have been a long Chinese tradition, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitiously. GT and I are not too superstitious of many Chinese traditions but we wanted to do this mainly for our grandparents and parents who have strong beliefs about them. We realized that our wedding day is not just about the two of us but really about our two separate families joining as one.
Double Happiness Cake
Did you have your wedding on a lucky day? Or are you considering one?
