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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

This day in history

Back in October I went to a Relief Society activity. Emily came, too, and announced her engagement to the ladies. One of the women at my table asked what day Emily would be getting married, so I told her.

"And what's significant about that date?" she asked.

I fumbled for an answer. It was not a question I was expecting to hear.

"It was, uh, just a convenient date," I started, "I mean, they were going to wait to get married in May on the day they met but that would make for a long engagement so instead they just picked a day in December."

"Well, there might not be anything significant abou it now but it will be her anniversary!" my friend Reenie observed with a smile.

One day I want to be like Reenie. Every time I see her she has this fantastic smile on her face and she's clearly far from being pessimistic.

Since then I've come up with more than one reason why Emily's wedding date is significant. First off, in numerals, her wedding date is 12-21-2010 or 21-12-2010, depending on which way you write your date, and that's pretty cool. Second, it's winter solstice (which I like to think of as winter solace—like the sun is saying, "Hey, guys, sorry it's winter; I'll start coming out more starting tomorrow."). Third...ummm...I only thought of two cool things and I think that's okay because the day will become significant on it's own accord because it is her wedding day.

When Andrew and I chose our wedding day our main criteria were that it not interfere with finals and that there was room in the temple that day, so after going over my final's schedule Andrew phoned the temple and asked them what dates and times they had available. Thus, we ended up getting married at 3:00 PM on Thursday, December 16, 2005, a completely convenient date.

I don't think there is anything else fun about our anniversary date besides the fact that it's our anniversary.

12-16-2005 or 16-12-2005, a boring date in every way, though if King Henry VI happens to be your favourite monarch this is the day he was crowned king of France (in 1431). In 1707, Mount Fuji erupted on this day (and hasn't since) and, speaking of Japan, on the same day (in 1997) an episode of Pokemon aired and caused seizures in many Japanese children watching TV that day. Thailand joined the UN in 1946, and in 1944 the Battle of the Bulge commenced. In 1773, Boston had a Tea Party and in 1930 Herman Lamm, a notorious and brilliant bank robber, died (by means of an angry mob).*

December 16th also boasts a number of obscure holidays: It's the Christian Feast day for Adelaide of Italy, South Africa's Day of Reconciliation, Kazakhstan's Independence day, Bahrain's National Day, Thailand's National Sports Day, and is also Victory Day for both Bangladesh and India. It's also the first day of Las Posadas, which is a nine-day-long celebration to reflect upon the trials Mary and Joseph went through before finding a place of lodging in Bethlehem (apparently this is a popular tradition in Mexico).*

So basically our wedding anniversary is celebrated worldwide. I'll bet they'll even have fireworks for us in Kazakhstan and Bahrain this Thursday (new bucket list idea: be in Kazakhstan or Bahrain on our anniversary) so be on the lookout (Lydia and...I don't think I know anyone in Kazakhstan right now).

Is your wedding date significant (I mean, besides being your anniversary and all)?

*Special thanks to Wikipedia.

8 comments:

  1. In 1903 Ford motor company shipped it's first car. Also a gajillion people died in 5 different wars and 8 million more in 9 different terrorist attacks. Lovely. :D

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  2. I was just thinking about this the other day. Not just anniversaries but birthdays. I like our anniversary date because it's nice and clean: 11-20-2001. In reality it was just the Tuesday before Thanksgiving so it worked out well with school.

    Our family has a fun birthday pattern: 8-03, 9-04, and 10-05 (Jeremy is the outlier at 6-28). Couldn't have worked out better if we tried.

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  3. I specifically chose our wedding day because it's 5-25-2005. It would have been 5-5-05, but I wanted to be 20 before we got married, so we had to wait until after my birthday. :) I'm sure it was a totally inconvenient day for everyone since it was a Wednesday morning, but I'll admit that I wasn't really thinking about convenience for everyone.

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  4. My cousins (from one uncle) all have square roots for their birthday, save one. My uncle LOVES this about his family. 5-25, 4-16, 3-9...

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  5. We chose our wedding date/place rather pragmatically too. We were married on February 14th (the middle of a three-day weekend), in the Manti temple. Having the wedding on Saturday instead of Friday made it easier for our families who were traveling from Washington and Missouri.
    We chose the Manti temple because it was the first temple (from the list of temples in Utah that Geneen said we could get married in) that I saw on the website, so it was the first one I called. They had room.
    Aside from the fact that we were married on Valentines day there is another cool thing about our wedding day. Geneen's great grandparents were also married in the Manti temple on February 14th. We didn't find out until later.

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  6. Emily will now share her special date with Adrian's birthday. He turns 4 on 12-21-10. Our anniversary is 04-03-04. If we waited to get married on a Sunday it could have been 04-04-04.

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  7. Oh yes, come to Bahrain. You'd feel celebrated all week! The traffic has been clogged all the time b/c the king is making all these public appearances and the national anthem is blasted at every opportunity. Jacqueline's preschool sang it yesterday at the end of their Christmas program. Viva la Bahrain! And your anniversary! ;)

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  8. We picked our Wedding date the same way you did, after finals when the temple had an opening, 12-29-2004 at 10:00. But the crazy thing is all our "dating anniversaries" (first date, first kiss, etc.) all happened on the 28th of some month. For years I would mess up and tell people it was on the 28th of December. This year I will get it right!

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