Wedding horoscope: is a star sign made for marriage?
The question of whether one of the twelve signs is better suited to marriage than the rest is as old as the newspaper horoscope. The honest answer is no. No sign marries better than another, none lasts longer, and there is no combination that is bound to fail. There are, however, different ideas of what commitment means — and that is exactly what a chart gives an account of.
Two quite different things are called a wedding horoscope
The first is the comparison of two birth charts, what astrologers call synastry. Two people, two charts, and the question of how the two chart wheels respond to each other.
The second is the chart of the wedding day itself: the picture of the sky for the moment the vows are exchanged. This technique is called electional astrology, and it asks not about the people involved but about the timing. In everyday life the two are run together, although they are two completely different kinds of information.
What counts when two charts are compared
The sun sign is only one point among many here — and rarely the most important.
- The Moon describes the need for security and the way someone responds to moods. In shared everyday life it is almost never the Sun that chafes, almost always the Moon.
- Venus and Mars stand for affection and desire: what someone warms to, and how they go about approaching it.
- Descendant and seventh house show what you hope for from another person — often something you live out very little yourself.
- Saturn is the real marriage factor: duration, responsibility, sitting out uncomfortable phases. Without a Saturn contact much of it stays infatuation; with too much of it things become hard.
- Mercury decides whether an argument gets settled or merely repeated.
Only from the interplay of these points does a picture emerge, and that picture is never a grade. It shows where two people understand each other effortlessly and where they are letting themselves in for work — no more than that, but no less either.
Why “Taurus and Cancer go well together” falls short
Sentences like that take two whole charts and compare a single factor from each. Two people with the same sun sign could hardly be more different once the Moon, the ascendant and the personal planets are added in. Compatibility tables are therefore a pleasant pastime and a poor basis for a decision.
The date: what electional astrology looks at for a wedding day
Anyone who can choose the date usually looks at a few things: at a Moon that still forms a clear contact in the course of the day instead of already running void of course, at a Venus that is not retrograde, at the ascendant for the minute of the ceremony, and at the seventh house.
For all that care, this holds: a well-chosen date carries no marriage, and an unfavourable one ruins none. Choosing the moment is a gesture, not a foundation. If the day on which both families can come looks mediocre astrologically, take the day on which both families can come.
What a wedding horoscope cannot do
It does not predict whether a marriage will last. It supplies no reason to leave someone, and none to marry someone. And it does not answer the opening question in the terms in which it was asked: it is not the sign that makes someone fit for marriage, but the willingness to take on the share of the work that one’s own chart points to.
If you are interested in how the twelve signs are built up, you will find that under zodiac signs; the various forms of horoscope are gathered under horoscopes.