How many days until the wedding?

A wedding countdown is set by hand in the same way as a birthday one — there is no fixed date on the page — and it tends to be watched a great deal more closely, because almost everything else in the planning is measured backwards from it.

British weddings come with a legal clock attached. A civil ceremony requires notice to be given at a register office at least twenty-eight full days beforehand, and that notice then stays valid for twelve months. A Church of England wedding usually needs banns read on three Sundays during the three months before the date, which is why couples marrying in a parish church are working to a calendar as much as to a plan. Scotland runs a separate system again, with its own notice period and no equivalent of banns.

Then there is the season. The great majority of British weddings fall between May and September, and Saturday takes most of them, which is what makes summer Saturdays at popular venues so scarce so far ahead. Marquees, outdoor ceremonies and photographs on a lawn all depend on a forecast nobody can see more than a week out, so the countdown is often the only part of the arrangement that behaves predictably.

The date you enter is stored in your browser, so the counter is still there when you come back to it, and it reports the remaining time to the second rather than in whole days.