And the Islands will reap some of the benefits

Hawai'i is a big wedding destination, but July 7 is busier than usual, says Susan O'Donnell, owner of Aloha Wedding Planners in Honolulu, which handles about 300 weddings a year.

"Usually we have four or five brides who wanted to get married on the first Saturday of July — this year, it's double that," she says.

And if Hawai'i is popular, consider Las Vegas, one of the nation's top wedding destinations.

The demand is so great that wedding chapels are opening early and closing late, says Erika Pope of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day are hot dates for Vegas weddings, "but 7/7/07 may outdo even those days," Pope says.

Whitney Lloyd, director of marketing and sales for Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas, says the date is "insanely popular." Already, she has booked 93 weddings. Compare that with June 30, when five are booked.

"People want to get married on the luckiest day, and it only comes around once a century," Lloyd says.

LUCKY NUMBER 7

"Seven is a sacred number," says Laura Stuckwisch, 37, who with her fiance, Jarred Illingworth, 29, chose the date for its spiritual significance.

"God created the heavens and earth and then he rested on the seventh day," Stuckwisch says. "The number appears hundreds of times in the Bible."

The Indianapolis couple are getting married at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Indianapolis, but the reception is at Belterra Casino Resort & Spa in Indiana.

"We believe in luck, but we believe in blessings, too," Stuckwisch says.

Wedding planners, reception hall managers and vendors such as florists and bakers are reporting an out-of-the-ordinary number of requests for July 7. Kathleen Murray, deputy editor of wedding planning website The Knot, says it's one of the most popular wedding dates she can recall.

Though there are no national statistics on how many couples have chosen 7/7/07 as their wedding day, a peek at theknot.com's 1.1 million membership confirms the date's popularity: 31,000 couples are getting married that Saturday, more than twice the average summer Saturday, when 12,000 couples say "I do." Compare that with a week earlier, June 30, when 14,000 couples are marrying.

The weekends before and after July 4 are always popular for weddings, Murray says. But not this popular: Last year, on July 8, 12,226 couples walked down the aisle.

POPULAR WEDDING DATES

There have been other numerically popular dates, says Jennifer Schneider, senior wedding planner at Madison Event Center in Covington, Ky.

Schneider has already booked weekend weddings for 6/7/08 and 8/8/08. But 5/5/05 (a Thursday) and 6/6/06 (a Tuesday) didn't spark the same frenzy as 7/7/07.

Couples have their own reasons for choosing July 7, and Murray has heard them all. "One couple said they're math freaks."

But for the most part, couples say the date signifies hitting the jackpot, or they choose it because it's easy to remember or believe it's holy.

Others "just love the date," Murray says. "When choosing between several dates in July, it's the coolest one."

Nora Aragon, 25, and Josh Zeller, 26, of Oceanside, Calif., were so determined to get married on July 7 that they camped for three nights and two days outside Ole Hanson Beach Club in San Clemente, to be first in line when the reception hall began taking 2007 bookings in October.

"I was flipping through the calendar and I just thought it was such a cool date," Aragon says.

Armed with an air bed, food and bridal magazines, Aragon took the day shift, Zeller the night shift. They got their wish: a wedding on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Even celebrities aren't immune to the date's lure. Desperate Housewives producer Marc Cherry told People magazine that he has been asked to save the date by Eva Longoria and her fiance, San Antonio Spur Tony Parker.

Numerologist Daniel Hardt, who owns Life Path Numerology Center in Indianapolis, says 7/7/07 may sound like a fun date to get married, but it may not be the best choice. The date breaks down to the number 5, which has an unstable energy attached to it.

"That's not to say if you chose that date, your marriage will go sour," he says. "But if you have a choice, why choose a date that could create conflict?"