7-7-7 proves to be a popular day for weddings abound

Saturday afternoon a group of loving friends and family, dressed in their Sunday best, gathered at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church to attend the marriage of Stephanie Cooper and Joe Borrego.

They listened to a piano play the familiar pre-wedding songs and hymns until promptly at 2 p.m. a priest clothed in his traditional vestments began the procession to the alter.

“We gather today in God’s presence ...,” the priest said as he began the well-known rites.

At about the same time that marriage was concluding, a group of equally loving friends and family had gathered at Cam-plex Park to attend the marriage of Charlotte Marie Souder and Patrick John Means. Some wore suits, but many wore shorts and a few wore tank tops.

These guests listened to a wedding mix that ranged from Johnny Cash to Frank Sinatra. When Ticker Lock, a DJ serving as the couple’s minister, waddled into sight a few minutes after 3 p.m., he was wearing a Goofy costume — not the traditional priestly garments.

“All right people ...,” the minister began in an appropriately Goofy voice as he read the ceremony from a Minnie Mouse coloring book.

The two weddings could hardly have been more different, but they had one thing in common: They occurred on what some consider the luckiest day of the century.

That’s because Saturday wasn’t just another summer weekday. It was July 7, 2007 or 07-07-07. All those lucky sevens sparked a flurry of marriages across the country from couples looking to add a little fortune to their upcoming lives together.

Churches around Gillette hosted ceremonies Saturday, while other marriages took place at Cam-plex Park at the same time as the Souder-Means wedding. Yet couples who got married around Gillette on this supposedly lucky day brush aside the notion that luck will play a part in their marriage.

Cooper and Borrego, who live in Vancouver, Wash., were simply looking for the Saturday after the Fourth of July so guests wouldn’t have to take as much time off.

“When it finally hit me, I thought there was so much more that we could have done,” Cooper said, thinking she could have hosted a casino night reception or had the wedding a 7 p.m.

Mandy Schlomer and Derrick McKown concede they were looking for a cool number when they started planning their wedding. An earlier option would have been 06-06-06, but the couple rejected that date for obvious reasons.

Schlomer and McKown, who have been together six-and-a-half years, eventually settled on Saturday. They reserved Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in February 2006, a few months before they were officially engaged about a year ago.

Despite their extremely advanced planning, Schlomer and McKown are sticking with a traditional wedding. They say they’re not superstitious. But they have made one small nod toward the day’s uniqueness: A sheet cake covered in sevens.

“It’s a cool number, I guess,” Schlomer said.

Souder and Means have been planning for this day just as long as Schlomer and McKown and they concede the date does have it’s obvious perks: “I think it’s easy for me to remember,” Means noted.

Yet both also say they weren’t hoping the day would add any fortune to their marriage.

“It just sounded good,” Souder said. “I don’t think a date has anything to do with it. It’s love. It’s marriage. It’s the essence of life.”

Untraditional as her marriage was, it had something besides a lucky day in common with all the other marriages today: Love.