Rush to Marry on China's 'Singles Day' 11/11

Thousands of Chinese couples are reportedly planning to get married on Friday, dubbed "singles' day" in China because the date is made up entirely of the number one.

November 11 has been celebrated as an unofficial day for the unattached in China since the 1990s, and is seen as a good date to tie the knot and leave the single life behind.

This year, it is seen as particularly auspicious because the year also ends in the number 11. The Shanghai Morning Post said more than 3,000 couples were booked to marry in the city, calling Friday a "once in a century opportunity".

Other Chinese cities were reporting a similar mania with more than 400 couples in the central city of Wuhan and over a hundred couples in eastern Jinan city planning to marry because of the auspicious date.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to come up with a wedding date like this and we won't miss it," groom Wang Qiang told the official Xinhua news agency.

Shanghai's wedding planning agencies said they were expecting brisk business for the day, with the rush promising a commercial boom.

"It's a special day," a saleswoman of the Wedding Story company told AFP. The company will host two weddings Friday, a rarity on a weekday.

Shanghai is also planning a mass dating event at the weekend tied to the date with as many as 10,000 people looking for their mates, an organizer told Agence France Presse.

"The problem of being single in Shanghai seems to have grown even bigger," said Yang Ying of Life Weekly Magazine, one of the organizers for the event.