Wedding Muhurta — Choosing the Date of the Marriage

Wedding muhurta is the most fully developed branch of date selection: whole chapters are given to it in the "Muhurta Chintamani" and whole treatises such as the "Vivaha Vrindavana". The reason is that a marriage counts as an event begun once and continuing for a lifetime, so the chart of the wedding moment is read almost as the birth chart of the union.

Hence the strictness of the rules. In other branches of muhurta part of the conditions count as desirable; here several are named obligatory, and breaking them is not softened by a good nakshatra or a fortunate lagna. Below they are set out separately from what is merely preferable.

What answers for marriage

The main house of the chart of the moment is the seventh: marriage and the union itself. Beside it one reads the second house, family and shared property, and the eighth, which in wedding muhurta answers for the length of the marriage and must therefore stay empty.

The natural significators are Venus, the planet of the married state, and Jupiter, the planet of blessing and, in a woman's chart, the significator of the husband. Both must be visible and unafflicted; the Moon answers for accord and peace in the home and must be strong as well.

What is checked first

Tradition calls the principal conditions obligatory rather than desirable. Jupiter and Venus must not be combust: Jupiter answers for the blessing of the marriage and Venus for the married state, and the period of their invisibility (asta) is closed to weddings. The intercalary lunar month adhika masa will not do, nor the four months of chaturmasya in the strict tradition, nor the days of eclipses and the day around them, nor amavasya, nor the karana vishti.

Separately one looks at the ages of the bride and groom relative to the month of the wedding and at the position of Jupiter and the Sun by sign — the rules of simha astha, guru astha and mala masa, which different regional schools apply with different severity.

Month and season

The lunar month is selected before any search for a day. For a wedding one usually names Magha, Phalguna, Vaishakha and Jyeshtha; some schools add Margashirsha and Kartika. Ashadha, Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashvina and Pausha are avoided. Traditions differ widely here, so the list is taken from one school and not mixed.

The asta of Jupiter and Venus closes several weeks a year, and together with the unsuitable months this narrows the field considerably: in some years two or three free stretches remain. That is exactly why a wedding date is worth looking for well in advance rather than a month before the celebration.

Auspicious guidelines

Nakshatras: Rohini, Mrigashira, Magha, Uttara Phalguni, Hasta, Swati, Anuradha, Mula, Uttara Ashadha, Uttara Bhadrapada, Revati. Tithis: 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13 of the waxing and waning Moon, the waxing cycle being preferred. Weekdays: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Tuesday and Saturday are not taken for weddings, and Sunday is allowed rarely and with reservations.

The rikta tithis — the 4th, 9th and 14th lunar days — are excluded, as are ashtami and chaturdashi of both cycles. Of the yogas, Vyatipata, Vaidhriti, Parigha, Vyaghata, Shula, Ganda, Atiganda and Vajra are not used. The daily stretches of rahu kala, yamaganda and gulika kala must not fall on the rite; they are reckoned from local sunrise, so they are taken for the city where the wedding is held.

In the chart of the moment itself one looks for a strong lagna — fixed signs are preferable to movable ones — a free seventh and eighth house, Venus and Jupiter unafflicted, and a Moon favourably placed for both participants by chandra bala and tara bala. Tradition requires the eighth house from the lagna of the moment to be left empty: it answers for the duration of the union.

Requirements for the chart of the moment

The seventh house of a wedding chart is left empty — in this branch even benefics there are undesirable: a planet in the seventh house of the moment counts as an intrusion into the relations of the spouses. Benefics are placed in the kendras and trikonas — the first, fourth, fifth, ninth and tenth houses — while malefics are moved to the third, sixth and eleventh, where they work rather than hinder.

The Moon at the time of the rite is not taken in the sixth, eighth or twelfth house from the lagna; a combust and lightless Moon of the last quarter is not used for weddings. The lord of the lagna is checked as well: it must not be afflicted or placed in the sixth, eighth or twelfth house, or only the outward side of the day turns out to be sound.

Matching the natal charts

A wedding date is chosen not on its own but for two natal charts. The Moon of each spouse must not fall into the unfavourable points of tara bala — the third (vipat), fifth (pratyari) and seventh (vidhata), as well as the first (janma) — and must not stand in the eighth or twelfth from the natal Moon. The current planetary periods are checked separately: a wedding in a heavy period for one of the spouses often turns out to have been postponed for natural reasons before an astrologer even considers it.

Comparing the charts themselves — kuta milana, matching by nakshatras and by the compatibility of the Moons — does not belong to muhurta: it is separate work done before the day is chosen. Muhurta answers the question "when", not "with whom", and does not repair incompatibility with a timetable.

Both calculations rest on the natal Moon and need a correct birth time. If the time is only approximate, it makes sense to go through rectification first, or chandra bala and tara bala will be counted from the wrong point.

The navamsha of the moment

In wedding muhurta, unlike the others, one often checks not only the rashi chart of the moment but the navamsha, the ninth divisional chart, which in Jyotish answers for marriage. The requirement is simple: the navamsha lagna should not fall into the sign of a malefic or land in the sixth, eighth or twelfth from the rashi lagna. The navamsha changes about every thirteen minutes, so this check narrows the chosen stretch to a quarter of an hour — and there one usually stops.

Dividing further is pointless: the timing of a rite is not accurate to better than a few minutes anyway, and the navamsha indicators do not change within one such stretch.

The order of work

• select the permissible lunar months and discard adhika masa, chaturmasya and the periods of asta of Jupiter and Venus;
• within the month select days by nakshatra, tithi and weekday, discarding vishti, eclipses, amavasya, rikta tithis and spoiled yogas;
• check the remaining days against the chandra bala and tara bala of both spouses;
• within the day find a stretch with a strong lagna, empty seventh and eighth houses and benefics in the kendras, outside rahu kala;
• compare the result with the current periods of both and, if possible, keep a fallback date.

If there is no choice

If the date is dictated by circumstance — relatives, the venue, documents — one takes from the available options the one where the obligatory conditions are not broken (the asta of Jupiter and Venus, eclipses, vishti) and yields on the rest. There are few flawless dates in a year, and tradition does not prescribe waiting for them for years.

A useful practical distinction: the registration and the celebration need not coincide. When the day of the party is fixed and too late to change, the muhurta is chosen for the registration itself or for the central ritual act — it takes minutes, and a suitable stretch for it can almost always be found.

Common mistakes

The first is chasing a flawless date: there are more than a dozen indicators, and a day on which all of them agree falls a few times a year, usually not when it is needed. The second is treating the chosen day as a guarantee: muhurta sets the conditions of the start, and after that the marriage lives by the charts of the spouses. The third is taking a date from a general calendar without reference to the participants: chandra bala and tara bala are individual, and a day that is good "in general" may be unsuitable for this particular couple.

The general rules of date selection are set out in the date selection section, the calendar indicators in the calendar, and the nearest related cases in the texts on conception and moving home.