10/10/10: Lucky day for Chinese to get married

BEIJING - Thousands of Chinese couples are rushing to tie the knot Sunday, believing the “lucky number day” - 10/10/10 - will give them a perfect marriage.

With the number 10 implying “perfection” in China, the lucky day has been selected by a lot of young people to exchange vows, just as days in previous years - 08/08/08 and 09/09/09 - which were also believed to be lucky, the China Daily reported Sunday.

“I tried to book a fancy hotel in March, more than six months ahead, but I found that all the good wedding banquets on Oct 10 were already sold out,” said Liu Mengmeng, 29, from Shanghai.

Tables for wedding parties in most hotels in China’s major cities were hard to book even half a year ago.

“We charge 3,588 yuan ($540) for each table, which is 20 percent higher on Oct 10 than usual days. In spite of that, the banquet halls had been fully booked in April,” said Ma Chuan, marketing manager of the Chang An Grand Hotel in Beijing.

In Shenzhen, wedding service agent Yang Yi said: “Some couples came to me so late that I couldn’t get everything ready in time. After all, everybody wants to marry on that day, and the earlier you start, the better wedding you get.”

Officials in marriage registration offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Jinan, Dalian and Zhengzhou decided to work extra hours Sunday to register new couples.

Local authorities in Shanghai said the city had 7,189 marriage registrations Aug 8, 2008 and 8,852 Sep 9, 2009.

“Nearly 700 couples had come to the registration office for reservations,” said an official with the marriage office in Dongcheng area in Beijing.

“That number is almost tenfold the everyday registration number. So we have arranged extra staff to ensure all the couples can get registered on that day,” he said.