A Sept. 11 wedding date? Couples have mixed emotions

When someone asks Richard Glovsky when he is getting married, he has taken to saying "the second Saturday in September."

Look at a calendar, and the reason he doesn't get specific becomes apparent. "When I would tell people `Sept. 11,' I would get a reaction like, `Ooh, why would you want to do that?' " says Glovsky, an employment law attorney who lives in Back Bay. "So now I just let them figure it out. I don't need that kind of reaction over something I'm quite enthused about."

This is the first year since the terrorist attacks of 2001 that Sept. 11 has fallen on a Saturday, the most popular day for weddings. Given that September is one of the most popular months for nuptials, couples looking for wedding dates faced the option of celebrating on a day with tragic associations.

Glovsky and his fiancee, Hilary Taylor, both 57, have decided to do it, but many others have decided against it. Only 50 couples are registered with the Association for Wedding Professionals International as getting married that Saturday -- that's less than one-third the number holding their weddings on other Saturdays this month. Some local industry representatives are seeing little change in their business, speculating that Massachusetts' legalization of same-sex weddings may be making up the difference.

Carol Giusti and Michael Cahalane of Walpole started looking at dates after they became engaged last November. They didn't want to marry on Labor Day weekend, fearing guests would resent being asked to interrupt a vacation, so they eyed the following Saturday. "We thought it would extend the summer," said Giusti, 32. "For some reason I had it in my head that that was the 12th, and it wasn't until three weeks later that Michael said, `The Saturday after Labor Day is Sept. 11.' I was devastated."

The couple changed their focus to Saturday, Sept. 18.

Giusti doesn't fault anyone who chooses Sept. 11, but she and Cahalane didn't want to offend guests who will come to the Irish Cultural Center in Canton for the affair. Neither bride nor groom knew anyone who died in the 2001 attacks, but they know people with connections to the tragedy.

"I look at it as a national day of grieving," Giusti said. "I wouldn't want to associate a day of joy for us with a day of sorrow for others."

Hilary Taylor and her fiance meanwhile, chose the date after a similar process of elimination: They loved the idea of a September wedding, but didn't want Labor Day weekend. They're both Jewish, so the next two Saturdays were out: The High Holy Days start at sundown Sept. 15 with Rosh Hashana and extend through Yom Kippur, on Saturday, Sept. 25.

That left Sept. 11. After she "agonized, " Taylor decided to assign new meaning to the date. She and Glovsky think the choice fits their unconventional story: They were friends at Newton North High School four decades earlier, and after two failed marriages apiece they reconnected four years ago.

"I just had a sense of happiness in turning something so sad and so tragic into something that would be about love and caring and devotion and the surprise of having something like this in your life 35 years later," she said. "I just turned the date in my mind into something wonderful."

Glovsky sees their marriage as the fulfillment of a long-postponed destiny. "It was a horrible day, one of the worst days in our country's history, but there have been a lot of tough days," he says, adding that few couples would think twice about marrying on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "It's nice to build some good stuff on that date, to think more normally about it."

The couple initially looked at hotels and other venues and had their pick among places normally booked far in advance. Hotel after hotel offered to waive their deposit or allow fewer than the minimum number of guests. Wanting something more intimate, they decided to invite 80 guests to the Wayland home of friends. Everyone they hired to help, Taylor said, was delighted to have the business.

Vanessa Holroyd, president of the Boston Wedding Group, said many members are reporting a surge of interest in Sept. 11 among couples who recently decided to marry, since places that would normally be booked still had openings. Herbusiness, Music Management of Belmont, has booked musicians for 30 weddings on Sept. 18 and one for Sept. 11. Last year, when Sept. 11 fell on a Thursday bookings were evenly distributed at 15 to 20 per weekend.

Some venues still have vacancies on Sept. 11. Jennifer Gullins, director of sales and catering at Ballroom Veronique in Brookline, which can handle three weddings a day, said the facility has one event scheduled, and it's a bat mitzvah.

"I have exhibitors saying, `Please hold a wedding expo on Sept. 11, because my date's wide open," said Robert Chevalier, president of Chevalier Associates, which produces the regional Original Wedding Expo. "I could definitely have a full house that day."

Chevalier said some venues are offering discounts on room rentals, but not on food and beverage services, their biggest money-maker.

Other industry representatives haven't seen a decrease in Sept. 11 business. Linda Blackmore, wedding specialist at Gourmet Caterers in Boston, said the company is again catering two weddings each Saturday this year. Rebecca Moesinger, co-owner of Konditor Meister bakery in Braintree, said 54 wedding cakes are scheduled for delivery on Sept. 11 -- 22 more than for the second Saturday in September last year. "I'm not saying it's forgotten," she said, "but I think people are moving ahead."

In Massachusetts, the legalization of same-sex weddings could be helping keep the numbers up, as couples who held small ceremonies after the ruling then looked for dates to hold bigger events.

Bill Docker and Tom Stearns were married by their minister in Provincetown on May 21 after getting their license May 17, the first day it was legal to do so. When they wanted to plan a "wedding celebration" for 120 friends and family, the date was almost predetermined: They had won a week's stay at a large waterfront home in a raffle two years earlier, and later reserved the second week in September. They would be staying a block from their own home, right on the beach, in a house whose deck alone can accommodate 50 people.

"It was awkward at first, because we wanted to be respectful of the day," said Docker, 51. "We do have several friends coming from New York City. One of my best friends is a fireman, and he and his wife will be here, and he had buried dozens and dozens of his comrades. But we made the personal decision that Sept. 11 just happened to be the second Saturday in September, and we would move forward."

Nonetheless, when Docker and Stearns celebrate their anniversary, it will not be on Sept. 11. They will mark the occasion on May 17.

Joe Yonan can be reached at yonan@globe.com.