Wedding Astrology: Interview With Author April Elliott Kent

April Elliott Kent is one of my astrological heroes. No, she’s not a Big Name Astrologer whose surname is immediately recognized in conversation among astrologers — Hand, Greene, Forrest. But among the many articles I have read in The Mountain Astrologer magazine over the years, her article The Astrological I: Putting the Self Back in Astrology has had the strongest impact on my writing. Practicing what she preaches, April’s blog posts seamlessly weave astrological knowledge with personal anecdotes, helping the reader to connect emotionally with a system that can seem hopelessly abstract.

Unfortunately, April doesn’t blog as much as she used to, but she has just come out with a book — Star Guide to Weddings: Your Horoscope for Living Happily Ever. She agreed to answer some of my questions about her book via email:

One of your specialties is using electional astrology to help couples plan wedding dates. This is a complex undertaking, as an astrologer needs to look at the positions of the Moon, Venus, aspects between planets, and so on. Yet, Star Guide is geared towards readers who don’t need to know anything beyond Sun sign astrology, as its premise is that the zodiac position of the Sun during one’s wedding describes the “personality” of a marriage. Can you explain how you came up with the idea of this book … and why the Sun sign in a couple’s marriage chart is so important?

In all honesty, the concept of the book was the brainchild of Lisa Finander, who contacted me when she was Acquisitions Editor for Astrology at Llewellyn Worldwide, my publisher. She’d read some of my other articles about the astrology of weddings and marriage and suggested a Sun sign book on the topic for a general audience. Like most “serious” astrologers, I have a love/hate relationship with Sun sign astrology. Those of us who have spent years immersed in the deep end of the astrological pool have a knee-jerk reaction to reducing astrology’s complexity into a few simple archetypes. So I kind of had to be sold on the idea. Lisa did a great job of that!

And yet … Sun signs are astrology’s ABC’s, the cornerstone of astrological literacy; and for the great majority of people who eventually study astrology in more depth, some form of Sun sign astrology is the portal. To a great extent, if you understand the meaning of the twelve signs, then you also have a rudimentary understanding of the planets and houses associated with those signs — what Zip Dobbyns called “The Astrological Alphabet.” And if you understand the basic relationship between signs, you have a foundation for understanding aspects. So Sun signs can be a very useful platform for those who choose to go farther with their astrological studies.

As you point out, the process of choosing a wedding date with astrology is far more complicated than anything presented in this book. But I would argue that the Sun sign for a couple’s marriage chart is important for exactly the same reason the Sun sign for an individual is important: The Sun dominates our sky and our life on this planet. It’s the life-giver, the engine that propels the vehicle, the sine qua non. My theory — and it’s not uniquely mine — is that when a couple marry, they create a third entity, a marriage with a chart all its own. In astrology, we believe that for whatever reason, a thing that is born at a moment in time — such as a marriage! — has the characteristics of that moment in time. What is the animating force of the marriage? What is its purpose for being? What does it want to become? Those are Sun questions, and I look to the Sun on the wedding date to try to answer those questions.

For each type of marriage, you suggest locations, colors and flowers, based on the meaning of that marriage’s Sun sign. In addition, you describe that marriage’s purpose, its needs and its source of friction. I presume that your intended reader is one who will peruse all twelve signs to determine a wedding date. The end of the book even features a section on choosing Your Best Marriage Signs, guiding the reader towards Marriage Signs of the same polarity (Fire/Air or Earth/Water) as the reader’s Sun sign. Yet, an Aquarius could end up in a Taurus marriage! How do you make sense of the factors involved in choosing one’s marriage date, from the perspective of the Sun signs of each member of a couple?

Actually, my dream for the book was to have something that helps people understand the marriage they’re in. I was encouraged to add material for those planning their weddings, but that information constitutes a very small portion of each chapter. My one real regret about the book, actually, is that I didn’t include at least a brief section somewhere about the importance of consulting with an astrologer to actually set the date and time of your wedding, and why that can be so helpful.

That said, I’m careful to point out that there are no bad wedding signs, and that anything can work if both people want it to — but let’s face it, some signs are more compatible than others. I use the analogy of a house: A marriage that begins with the Sun in a particular sign may be like a house that’s absolutely stunning, but just isn’t your style. This might be the case with an Aquarian, who by nature is sociable and likes a lot of personal freedom — a sort of mid-century modern house — but who ends up living in a Taurus marriage, which is more like a cozy log cabin.

But let’s think about that for a moment. You purchase a house for a lot of reasons — location, school district, investment potential. You may not love the style of the house, but as long as it increases in value, keeps you dry, and serves your basic needs, well, you can always renovate, you know? An Aquarius can paint the walls of the log cabin bright blue, add a deck, build a clubhouse for his poker parties, whatever.

Back when people used to buy a house as newlyweds and stay in it for 55 years, everyone started out with cookie-cutter tract houses which, over the years, they renovated to suit the changing needs of their family. Add a room, plant a tree, renovate the bathroom. That’s what we do with marriages: we adapt them to accommodate our individual needs. All marriages change over the years, because both the individuals in the marriage change.

So sure, getting married in a month when the Sun is in a sign that is compatible with your Sun signs, or whatever, is nice if you can get it. It would also be nice if our children were born with Sun signs that blended easily with our own; but if they aren’t, we don’t send them back … we try to learn from the relationship.

The meat of your book concerns the Care and Feeding of One’s Marriage. For me, this was the most unique part of the book, as you basically go through all twelve astrological houses — or areas of experience — of a marriage’s “birth” chart:

• 1st House – The Face You Show the World
• 2nd House – What You Own
• 3rd House – How You Communicate
• 4th House – How You Live
• 5th House – Your Children and Creative Spirit
• 6th House – Your Work, Health and Daily Routine
• 7th House – Your Friends and Foes
• 8th House – What You Share
• 9th House – What You Believe
• 10th House – Your Contribution to the World
• 11th House – Your Place in Society
• 12th House – Your Private Sanctuary

I always love reading astrologers’ in
terpretations of signs on house cusps (for example, Gemini in the 4th House in your Pisces chapter: “You enjoy variety in your home, and prefer a house with many rooms…”). Yet the skeptic in me thinks the following: “April is putting the Sun sign on the marriage chart’s Ascendant, as Sun sign horoscope writers do for individuals. This alone is somewhat questionable, yet she’s also doing it for an entity whose natal chart is based on the date that two people make wedding vows!” In your personal experience as an astrologer who has helped many couples plan wedding dates, to what extent do your interpretations in the Care and Feeding sections truly resonate with the personality of these marriages?

Honestly? When I’m through setting the date for my clients, they toddle off into the sunset to enjoy their honeymoons and have kids and all the rest. I am but a dim memory to them; they never call, they never write! So I don’t have a lot of people coming back and reporting to me on their sex lives or whatever. Much of this is speculative. But I will say that a gratifying number of people who have read the book profess that they’re kind of stunned at how accurate it is. And between you and me and your many readers, frankly that surprises me a little as well.

It all goes back to the fact that “real” astrologers like you and me — when we’re not slumming around in Sun Sign land! — aren’t happy with any chart that doesn’t have a birth time. And yet, we work with these charts all the time, often with interesting and illuminating results. Most the celebrity and political profiles on Tarot.com or even in astrology magazines use speculative birth times. Often, we make do with noon charts (which assume that a prominent person can be “read” according to placing the Sun in the 10th house, the house of career and public personae) or with solar charts, which is what I used in the book.

Solar charts are also the basis of most horoscopes that are written for newspapers, websites, and the rest. These Sun sign horoscopes have a lot to answer for, but when they’re done well, they can be inspirational and imaginative. Look at what Rob Brezsny does with his column “Free Will Astrology” or Michael Lutin with his Sun sign work. To me, that’s good astrology, if limited. It’s no substitute for a full astrological analysis, and of course we all hope readers of Sun Sign stuff will be intrigued enough to pursue meatier astrology. But if they don’t — and let’s face it, most won’t — well, at least we’ve given them a different way of thinking about themselves, their lives, and their marriage.

Thanks, April!

To understand your marriage better, or find the perfect gift for your soon-to-be-wed friend, purchase Star Guide to Weddings at amazon.com.