HONG KONG: Couples from Hong Kong and Singapore are flocking to tie the knot on 12/12/12, sparking a wedding boom on the century’s last sequential dates seen as auspicious by some to guarantee a happy marriage. Dates like 10/10/10 or 11/11/11 have traditionally seen couples from the two places rush to get married, with registrations set to surge on Dec. 12 this year, which is viewed as signifying “love.”
Hong Kong’s marriage registry said it has received 696 notifications from couples planning to get married on Wednesday, nearly four times the daily average of 177 registrations in October, according to a spokesman.
In Singapore, which is three-fourths ethnic Chinese, 540 couples have applied to be married Wednesday, statistics from the Registry of Marriages website showed — an eight-fold increase in the daily average for non-Muslim weddings. Muslim weddings are recorded separately. A wedding planner in Singapore said the date will be one of the busiest of the year for marriage-linked businesses.
“It is a hot date,” said Renee Leung, founder and chief executive officer of marriage planning firm The Wedding Butler, adding that her company was handling 20 weddings on the day itself, up from the usual one or two per day. “It’s just an auspicious calendar number... a lot of people say its an easy number to remember,” she told AFP.
The 12/12/12 registrations however have shrunk in both places compared to previous sequential dates. Hong Kong saw 1,002 weddings on Nov. 11 last year, which signified “eternal love,” and 859 weddings on October 10, 2010 which represented “perfection.” Singapore had 553 and 724 marriages on the same dates.
