When William Fowler and Jessica Lanier decided to marry on Leap Day 2016, no one was really surprised.
The Glen Burnie couple proudly describes themselves as unconventional.
For example, Lanier, 24, will don pink Chuck Taylors with her wedding gown on Monday, while Fowler, 28, will wear a black-and-white houndstooth jacket, a lime green bowtie and suspenders. Each has a daughter who will be wearing hot pink.
Lanier, who fell for her future husband four years ago during a chance meeting at Starbucks, originally mulled a May wedding date.
But then she noticed this was a leap year, meaning February gets an extra day to account for the fact that it actually takes the earth 365 days and six hours to revolve around the sun.
“I thought that would be a cooler date,” Lanier said.
As of Friday morning, the Fowler-Lanier nuptials were one of only two Leap Day weddings booked at the Annapolis Wedding Chapel.
Chapel owner and wedding officiant Loveta Wilen expects that to change by Monday morning.
Wilen predicts couples will wake up that day, realize the quirky date and decide to elope.
“Oh my gosh, that happens a lot,” said Wilen, who opened the chapel in 2011 and since then has seen the affianced flock there for weddings on memorable dates, such as 11/11/11/, 12/12/12 and 11/12/13.
“People just go for the numbers,” she said.
The other couple, Peter and Megan, are planning to elope at the chapel on Monday. Peter, a chief in the U.S. Navy, asked to have his last name withheld because the elopement is going to be a surprise to their families.
They plan to have a larger ceremony next year, but picked the last Monday in February out of convenience. When they realized it was Leap Day, that was a cool bonus, Peter said.
"That makes it special for us," he said.
Kristen Maxwell Cooper, deputy editor at The Knot, said she is seeing an uptick in weddings on Leap Day.
“Based on our couples on TheKnot.com, there are approximately 1,480 weddings planned for Monday, Feb. 29,” Cooper said in an email. “There's an average of 732 weddings a day for the other four Mondays in February, so there's definitely a bump on Leap Day! A Leap Day wedding certainly makes for a fun and memorable wedding date.”
Leap Day has also become known as a day when women can propose to men, breaking tradition.
Cooper said that custom dates back several hundred years, when leap year wasn’t recognized by English law.
“Since it had no legal status, formal traditions did not apply on this day,” she said. “It was also thought that since leap year corrected the discrepancy between the calendar year and the time it takes for the earth to complete one orbit of the sun, it was an opportunity for women to correct a tradition that was one-sided and unfair.”
According to Wikipedia, in some countries, if a man refuses, he is obligated to give the woman money or buy her a dress. In upper-crust Europe, if the man turns the woman down, he must purchase 12 pairs of gloves for the woman, to hide the woman's embarrassment of not having an engagement ring.
In Ireland, the tradition is supposed to originate from a deal between St. Bridget and St. Patrick.
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But according to Greek folklore, it’s supposedly unlucky to marry in a leap year—and especially on Leap Day.
That’s not deterring Fowler and Lanier, or Peter and Megan, though.
On Leap Day in 2012, Wilen officiated five or six weddings. She said couples who marry on Feb. 29 like the idea of having an anniversary they can always remember.
Or they like the idea of being able to joke they’ve only been married, say, for four years, when it’s really been 16.
Fowler cracked that he doesn’t plan to celebrate their wedding anniversary at all.
“It’s all part of my ploy,” he said.
His bride, on the other hand, is thinking about an anniversary celebration that spans Feb. 28 and March 1 in non-leap years.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if four years from now, we have a big party,” Lanier said.
Peter said since he and his wife are planning to have another ceremony next year, he'll have to keep track of multiple anniversaries.
"I hope I can handle it," he said with a laugh.
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