Jewish Wedding Dates: When You Can and Cannot Marry.
The Hebrew calendar is the most computable in the world — fixed arithmetic, no observation, no committee. But the wedding rules on top of it are not one ruleset, and most pages you will find pretend otherwise.
The calendar
Fixed and arithmetic since roughly the 10th century (traditionally attributed to Hillel II, though scholars hold it settled in stages). The molad interval is 29 days 12 hours 793 chalakim, with four postponement rules and a 19-year cycle placing leap years at positions 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19.
The rules
- Shabbat
- No weddings. A marriage is a kinyan, an acquisition, which may not be transacted on Shabbat (Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer 64). This is the only rule that needs your location, because it depends on sunset.
- Yom Tov
- No weddings on the festivals. Whether a second festival day applies depends on whether you are in Israel or the diaspora.
- Chol HaMoed
- Prohibited under Orthodox halacha (Moed Katan 8b; Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 546:1) on the principle that one joy should not be merged into another. Non-Orthodox authorities read this differently.
- Sefirat HaOmer
- The contested one. Sephardi custom bars Omer days 1–33; Ashkenazi "first half" bars 1–32; Ashkenazi "second half" bars roughly Rosh Chodesh Iyar into Sivan. All Ashkenazi customs permit Lag BaOmer itself.
- The Three Weeks
- Sephardi practice (the Mechaber, OC 551:2) bars weddings from Rosh Chodesh Av. Ashkenazi practice (the Rema) bars them from 17 Tammuz. Both run through Tisha B'Av.
- Fast days
- No weddings on Yom Kippur, Tisha B'Av, or the four minor fasts — you cannot hold the feast.
What can be worked out, and what cannot
A calendar can determine
- Every date above, exactly, years in advance
- The three-band answer: definitely forbidden, depends on your custom, definitely permitted
- Shabbat and festival boundaries, given a location
Only your rabbi can decide
Which Omer custom your family follows, and the disputed edge of 10 Av before midday. Sources genuinely disagree on that morning, and a page that renders a green tick there is guessing.
A common claim, corrected
Tuesday is the lucky day for a Jewish wedding, because “ki tov” appears twice in the creation account.
There is no classical basis for this. Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, writing in Jewish Action, the Orthodox Union's own magazine, concludes plainly that no such preference exists in the sources. The actual rule is Mishnah Ketubot 1:1, where virgins marry on Wednesday and widows on Thursday, and it was driven by court sitting days so a groom with a claim could reach the beit din the next morning. The Gemara itself says it lapses where courts have no fixed days. The rationale has been obsolete for centuries.
In Israel there is no civil marriage. Jewish weddings run through the Chief Rabbinate, which will not register a wedding on a prohibited date, so for about seven million people this calendar is not advisory, it is the law.