Why you shouldn’t get married on Valentine’s Day
Setting your wedding for Valentine’s Day is bad for your marriage, according to findings of a new study by economists from the University of Melbourne in Australia. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- It is not that Valentine’s Day is jinxed, but rather that couples who choose such dates for their weddings tend to have a mindset that is not conducive to lasting marriages.
- On analysing the findings, the researchers found that couples who get married on the 14th of February are 18 to 36 per cent more likely to get a divorce than those who choose ordinary days.
Are you planning to set your wedding day to coincide with Valentine’s Day next year?
If you are, think again because researchers say that it is hardly the best day to get married. It may be the universal day of love, but setting your wedding for Valentine’s Day is bad for your marriage, according to findings of a new study by economists from the University of Melbourne in Australia.
The researchers found that that Valentine’s Day and other special number dates like 01/02/03 or 09/09/99 are incredibly popular with couples who are planning weddings. They found that these dates are up to five times popular than ordinary dates. In fact, between 2005 and 2013, Valentine’s Day was found to be the most popular day of the year for weddings. Sadly, these dates also seem to spell doom for marriages.
On analysing the findings, the researchers found that couples who get married on the 14th of February are 18 to 36 per cent more likely to get a divorce than those who choose ordinary days. The same applied to couples who choose to wed on special number dates. Just nine years following the wedding, 21 per cent of marriages that began on Valentine’s Day came to an end. The number was slightly lower at 19 per cent for those couples who wed on special number dates.
Why not 14th February?
It is not that Valentine’s Day is jinxed, but rather that couples who choose such dates for their weddings tend to have a mindset that is not conducive to lasting marriages. Such couples are likely to be more focused on planning the wedding, than the marriage itself.
“People who got married on special dates were more likely to have been married before and were more likely to have children already. Brides who got married on Valentine’s Day were also more likely to be pregnant on their wedding day than those who got married on ordinary dates,” said Professor David Ribar, one of the study’s authors.
The researchers also found that couples who got married on special dates were less alike in terms of age and level of education than couples who married on ordinary dates, another factor which could explain the higher divorce rates among couples who choose to get married on special dates.
