According to a research carried out by Australia's University of Melbourne, whose report Not Your Lucky Day: Romantically and Numerically Special Wedding Date Divorce Risks paints a heartbreaking picture of marriages that begin on special dates.
The report's authors, Dr Jan Kabatek and Professor David Ribar, say that about 11 percent of Valentine's Day marriages and 10 percent of same-number-date marriages (like 9/9/99, or 3/3/03), are destined to fail in the first five years, compared to eight percent of marriages on 'ordinary dates'.
And by the ninth anniversary, those numbers jump to 21 percent for Valentine's Day, 19 percent for same-number dates, and just 16 percent of ordinary dates.
Dr Kabatek and Prof Ribar point to the characteristics of couples who tend to get married on 'special' days as a possible reason for failure.
Prof Ribar said: "People who got married on special dates were more likely to have been married before and more likely to have children already." Dr Kabatek said: "We also found that spouses who married on special dates were less alike, in terms of education and ages, than spouses who married on ordinary dates."
"We also found that brides who married on Valentine's Day were more likely to be pregnant on their wedding day than those who married on ordinary dates."
Prof Ribar believes that couples who don't bother with quirky dates are more strongly influenced by how much they really click.
He said: "Couples who marry on ordinary dates may be more strongly influenced by characteristics of their relationships and their compatibility than couples who marry on special dates."
The study used data from more than one million Dutch marriages from 1999 to 2013.
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