Dear Online Diary,
... Our wedding date, that is. I was reviewing my posts when I noticed that there’s no entry about our wedding date –
10.23.2010. I believe it is important for people to know what’s behind it and how was the process of choosing the date (at least what we went through).
{The W@W calendar set on October 2010}We, Filipinos, are superstitious when it comes to choosing the date of our wedding. Although there’s no clear view of how it started or where it came from, the one clear thing is that choosing the right date will bring good luck to the couple… and we want to have all the good luck that we can have. Who doesn't? :)
The church is non-negotiable. It has to be the Bamboo Organ Church. I mentioned
here why I preferred to marry in this historical church and H2B agreed, without hesitation.
The next thing to do was to choose the date…
THE date. We came up with these requirements:
A. It has to be on an uneventful month although we wanted to keep our anniversary date, which is every 21st of the month.
B. It has to be on a weekend. Weekdays are too stressful not only for both of us but for the guests.
Did I mention that 10.23.2010
wasn’t our original choice? We were keen on marrying on
March 21st (which is today, actually. Oh gosh. It is such a coincidence that I'm writing about our wedding date today).
Around April last year, I dialed the Bamboo Organ registrar's office to find out if we can reserve the date that we wanted. The thing is, it falls on a Sunday and the church does not hold weddings on a Sunday but March 20th was still open. I wasn’t too keen on the date so I advised them that I’ll call back after consulting the situation with H2B, who later agreed on the day. As I dialed the number back to let the registrar know about our decision, I got nothing but a busy dial tone.
When I dialed the registrar's office after a day or two, March 20th was already taken. The only available slot was at 9:00 AM and nope, we do not prefer a morning wedding. It gave me anxiety and yes, my world turned upside down. The church won’t hold weddings every February because of the Bamboo Organ Festival so the next best thing is to choose from the
–ber months.
Here are our arguments:
It can’t be on November. It’s my birth month.It can’t be on December. Products and services are usually higher every December than any other months. We want a budgeted wedding.It can’t be on September. It’s too early.So, we chose October…
Lucky October. It feels just right. Besides, 10-xx-2010 sounds great.
After coming up with our preferred month, we then chose the date. It has to be on a Saturday. We wanted to stay away from
10-10-10 because of some obvious reasons. We would have chosen the
27th of the month but I wanted to stay out of the Halloween weekend (no pun intended).
16th was taken. You now know what comes next. It makes me think that God reserved the 23rd of the month just for us. It’s ours.
And the rest is history. Fast forward…
It is only now that I discovered how lucky our wedding date is. Please note that we never referred to these things long before we choose our wedding date. Let me present some things I found out from vast resources that are worth sharing:
Exhibit A.According to ancient beliefs, getting married on a full moon brings good luck to the couple. 10.23.2010 is a full moon as what we can see from the
Lunar Calendar for 2010.
Exhibit B.Chinese (and those who believe in it) publishes the
auspicious wedding dates each year according to the Chinese Lunar Horoscope. 10.23.2010 is one of the lucky dates on the year of the Golden Tiger. What’s more interesting is that neither of us was born in the year of the Rat, which is a conflicting birth sign for this particular date. Neither of us is Chinese but it won’t hurt to believe, right?
Exhibit C.We’re not heavy believers of numerology but the date should mean something good. And it does. Let’s do the math:
1+0+2+3+2+0+1+0 =
9According to the trusty
Wikipedia:
The number 9 (九, Pinyin: jiŭ, jyutping: gau2), being the greatest of single-digit numbers, was historically associated with the Emperor of China; the Emperor's robes often had nine dragons, and Chinese mythology held that the dragon has nine children.
Moreover, the number 9 is a homophone of the word for "longlasting" (久), and as such is often used in weddings.
As a final note, I’d like to stress that we did not prefer to marry on 10.23.2010 but God reserved it for us. Indeed, God makes the plan. HE wants H2B and I to exchange our “I do’s” on 10.23.2010.
That alone makes us love our wedding date oh so dearly. HE has given us the right suppliers. Although there are some challenging things we encountered and ought to be encountered in the future, HE's with us no matter what. Thanks to HIM. ^___^
