By Adrienne Martini

Contributing Writer

It’s hard to say where humankind’s superstitions about numbers came from but it would be equally hard to deny its impact.

A fair number of hotels omit numbering the 13th floor. Friday the 13th has long been viewed with caution or with horror, thanks to a popular series of slasher flicks. Our aversion to 13 is so well established that there is even a name _ triskaidekaphobia _ for an extreme reaction to it.

While most of can agree on which number is bad, our culture is more divided about which numbers are good. But if forced to chose, the number seven would be in the top 10.

Seven turns up quite a bit. There are seven days in a week, seven chakras in the body and seven wonders of the ancient world. Researchers have discovered that the human memory can only hold seven pieces of information at one time. William Shakespeare described the seven ages of man. Triple 7s equals big money on a slot machine.

Which is why, for wedding planners all over the globe, this weekend has been a lucky one.

A mathematician could give you the exact number of years between occurrences _ but it is fair to say that a Saturday with three 7s in its date is hard to come by.

Celebrities such as Eva Longoria and Wolfgang Puck are taking advantage of this triply lucky day.

Time magazine is calling 7/7/07 "the most popular wedding day ever."

The Knot, an online wedding registry, saw its listings triple to 38,000 for that day, up from an average of 12,000 for a Saturday in July.

July 7 is also a popular day locally.

"That is the most popular day this year for me," said photographer Meg Anderson Argo. "It’s my most requested date thus far."

According to Argo, finding services might be difficult for couples who didn’t plan far enough in advance.

"I think there are going to be more wedding couples than professionals to service them," she said. "All of the wedding photographers have been booked for a year. We don’t have any left to recommend."

Jefferson bride Nicole Fianchino started planning 18 months before the big day.

"We did everything really far in advance," she said. "Going through the whole wedding process, it was hard to pick a date. We picked July 7 because it was cool and happened to fall on a Saturday."

Fianchino admits that she is superstitious but didn’t pick that date because her marriage would need the luck.

"It just was a good date," she says. "My fiancé jokes that it will be easy for him to remember."

Bride Dana Dutcher from Oneonta has experienced July 7 from both sides of the retail counter.

Not only is she getting married that day but she also works at Rainbow’s End Weddings and More.

"It’s been a very popular day. I’ve gotten calls that people have a hard time booking services. I think that it is pretty popular because three sevens are lucky," she said.

Dutcher said she is generally not very superstitious and said that picking her wedding date based on a number’s luck is out of character for her.

"I guess I just jumped on the bandwagon," she said.

There were practical considerations as well, however.

A lot of family would already be in town after having traveled here for the Fourth of July.

It would be easier for everyone to get together.

"Plus with three sevens, it seemed lucky," Dutcher said. "We need all the luck we can get."

One of the benefits of choosing such a lucky date is that the theme of the wedding can be easy to decide on. Time magazine reports that some brides are choosing Vegas-inspired colors like red, black and white, as well as incorporating the number into their bouquets with seven kinds of flowers or cakes with seven different layers.

Janet Hurley-Quankenbush, who, with her husband, Mark Quackenbush, runs Sunrise Specialty Catering and the Special Touches Linen and Rental service, does "have one wedding whose theme is the casino theme and the lucky sevens."

For Hurley-Quackenbush, this Saturday is a full day. "On July 7 we are booked," she says. "We have three weddings as well a couple of linen commitments. On average we have one or two."

If all of these lucky sevens fail to move you, you might want to consider that the number eight has a lot going for it as well. There are eight days of Hanukkah, for example. Eight is the atomic number of oxygen, an element that is a cornerstone of life on this planet. An eight tipped on its side is the symbol for infinity, which seems like a good sign for a marriage. As a bonus, a wedding couple could dance to The Beatles’ "Eight Days a Week."

Aug. 8, 2008, probably won’t be as remarkable as July 7, 2007, because it falls on a Friday, but there might still be a smaller spike in booking.

"Funny things like will happen," Hurley-Quackenbush said.