Who would get married on Friday the 13th?

The wedding will have a Friday the 13th theme

Even people who are not superstitious know that Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day. So who would organise the biggest day of their life on that date?

No-one really seems to know why, but 13 has long been considered an unlucky number. When it is combined with the least fortunate day of the week - Friday - it seems to create a double whammy of bad luck.

Most people would consider it to be superstitious nonsense, yet who would deny having a slight twinge of anxiety when a major event such as a job interview falls on Friday the 13th?

This year there are two months which contain the bad luck date - September and December. So with 363 other days to chose from, it would be easy for couples to take the small precaution of avoiding those dates for their wedding.

Iain Eakin and Laura Webster, from Glasgow, have done the exact opposite. They have embraced Friday the 13th and made it part of their wedding plans.

Alternative date

After signing the marriage register, at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired House for an Art Lover, Iain will walk back down the aisle wearing an ice hockey mask like Friday the 13th movie killer Jason Voorhees.

The wedding cake, which will be on display as the couple marry, will carry on the theme with a miniature bride running away from the kilted groom who is wearing a Jason mask, with a knife ready to stab the bride.

And when guests sit down for a meal, the tables will reflect the slasher theme with names such as Elm Street, Sorority Row and The Last House on the Left.

Iain says their chosen wedding date had not been available, but when they were offered the alternative date, at a discount of 13%, they jumped at the chance.

"We were told it had not been taken because people are really superstitious," Iain says.

"But we're not superstitious so we thought we'd take it. I'm quite a big movie fan and I know that Laura likes those kind of movies, so I said 'why not?'"

He adds: "It's something else that makes the day a bit more special."

His fiancee Laura says the couple are already prone to bad luck so they have no fear of the date.

She says: "We seem to attract everything that goes wrong. It can't make it go any more wrong, can it?"

Iain and Laura say they are not at all superstitious

Wedding capital

Laura Cook, who arranges the weddings at House for an Art Lover, says it is quite unusual for people to want to get married on that date.

She says: "You do get a lot of people who say 'no way'. When it comes to their special day they don't want any bad luck around it, so their first thoughts are normally 'no I don't want that date'."

"On the other hand, if they love the venue, if that's where they want to get married and that's the only date available, they put the Friday the 13th thing to one side," Ms Cook adds.

She says the venue offered a discount for Friday the 13th earlier this year when they realised that they were not booking up as quickly as other dates.

The combination of Friday and 13 is coming around again in December this year and in June 2014.

Both those dates are already booked up, says Ms Cook.

House for an Art Lover in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park is a popular wedding venue

Gretna is Scotland's wedding capital, hosting about 5,000 ceremonies per year - one sixth of the total for the whole of Scotland.

Alister Lynn, owner of the Gretna Wedding Bureau, a one-stop-shop for wedding arrangements, says he was surprised to find that bookings had increased for Friday the 13th.

He has 11 weddings booked for 13 September, which compares favourably with other Fridays.

Mr Lynn says: "I would have thought Friday the 13th would have been avoided but either people have not taken it on board or have said they want that particular date."

He says it could be that the date has an appeal similar to the unique dates such as 12/12/12, which proved very popular last year.

More superstitious

In contrast, KJ Mills, who runs The Wedding Planner bridal shop in Helensburgh, says that she has no-one who has ordered a bridal gown for Friday the 13th.

"September is height of season and Fridays and Saturdays are usually stocked out so I'm really surprised I don't have a single person on that day," she says.

"We must be more superstitious than I thought."

Ms Mills says that wedding suppliers had been "nervous" of 2013 being a bad year because of the last two digits of the number.

She says: "But it is not so much the year which seems to cause the problem, I think it would be the date, the 13th. I can understand why people would maybe steer clear of it."

For Laura and Iain, it promises to be a day they will always remember, but the bride-to-be already has plans to make sure it will never be forgotten.

"We are planning to get Friday the 13th tattoos for our first anniversary," she says.

Ms Cook, who arranges weddings for House for an Art Lover, is adamant that everything will be fine on the big day.

"We've never had any disasters on that date," she says.

"It is just the same as any other day. Touch wood."