Russian couples rush to marry on 'lucky' 08.08.08

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MOSCOW, Aug 2 (AFP): Russian marriage offices have seen a surge of applications to wed this coming Friday due to the supposedly lucky character of the date: 08.08.08, officials and local media said.

In Moscow, registry offices will stay open late as applications to marry on August 8 are up by more than two thirds compared to a normal Friday in summer, a spokeswoman for the city's registry offices, Yevgenia Smirnova, told AFP.

Normally between 900 and 1,000 marriages take place on a regular Friday or Saturday in summer, she said, but applications had already reached 1,675 by the end of last week.

A similar surge occurred last year with the alignment of the figure seven on July 7. But many couples deem August 8 especially fortuitous as the digit eight resembles the mathematical sign for infinity, newspapers said.

However it also said that in places up to a quarter of those who married on July 7 last year had already divorced.