How to Pick a Wedding Date

Look into wedding dates and you run into words like son-free day, Sibak day, and Ssangchunnyeon. This page lays out what each tradition says and where it is recorded. We do not pin down good days and bad days here. What both families' schedules and the venue allow comes first, and the date is a reference.

Why look at son-free days

In Korean folk tradition, Son is a being said to move through the directions by date and get in the way of people's affairs. On a day whose lunar date ends in 9 or 0, Son is said to rise to the sky and be in no direction, so the custom grew of holding a big gathering-event on that day. A wedding is the classic example.

Son-free days are set by the lunar calendar, though, so they fall with no regard for day of the week. A wedding needs a weekend so people can actually come, so what you really need is a son-free day that falls on a weekend. There is a page that collects those by year.

See 2026's son-free days that fall on a weekend

What is a Sibak day?

Its full name is Sibakdaepae day. Tradition records it as a day to especially avoid a big event like a wedding. It is set by a combination of the year, the month, and the ganji day, so it does not fall in every month, and some months have none. A day marked Sibak on the calendar is one of these, and a month with none is marked as having none.

Even 17th-century personal letters show dates chosen to avoid this day (Kim Man-tae, 2009). It is an old custom, but we do not rule here that the day itself is bad.

Ssangchunnyeon and Muchunnyeon

When a lunar year (from one Seol to the next) contains Ipchun twice, it is called Ssangchunnyeon; when it contains none, Muchunnyeon. This happens because the lunar and solar calendars run different lengths, and it comes around every few years.

This term is not our own native tradition. It came from Han Chinese custom, and records show it spread widely here through the wedding industry around 2006. So we do not say here which year is good or bad; we only tell you that the term exists and where it came from.

How Samjae is read

A tradition that groups the earthly branch of one's birth year into threes by Samhap, counting three years at a time. The first year was called Deul-samjae, the second Jal-samjae, and the last Nal-samjae. Old records mention a reading of misfortune, and alongside it, a Boksamjae reading of fortune.

Samjae for 2026, all twelve zodiac signs at once

Sources: 국립민속박물관 한국민속대백과사전 (National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, entries on son-free day and Samjae), and Kim Man-tae, 한국 택일풍속의 전승양상과 특징 (Transmission and Characteristics of Korean Date-Selection Customs, 정신문화연구, vol. 32 no. 1, 2009). These are all records of tradition, and we do not rule on luck here.