April Elliott Kent is the go-to astrologer for setting wedding dates and has now published her trade secrets online. She begins with a tale of a bad marriage that may have had its expiration date extended with good astrology, and I like what she has to say about it:

Perhaps, if left to our own devices, we instinctively gravitate to the moments that are right for us to do things – marry, start a business, plant a rose bush – whether or not our efforts lead to the outcome we’d hoped for. In fact, I suspect that using astrology in an attempt to influence the outcome of our actions may be self-defeating – that this very human desire to outwit fate may, in fact, deny us our right course of action and neutralize astrology’s power to show us both our own motivations and the mysterious workings of spirit.

Still, there are some things to keep in mind about any electional chart, including Mercury retrograde, any significant challenging aspects of significant planets to the angles (ascendant and midheaven), and a nice aspect or two to the nodes or Part of Fortune always add a nice touch.

April ends her article with a bit more wisdom:

We can approach astrology forcefully and inorganically, as a way of bending life to some abstract ideal. Or we can approach it with the wisdom of the moon … respecting its mystery and acknowledging our limited understanding. We can use it to analyze the moments to which we are spontaneously drawn – just as we spontaneously gravitated toward the moment of birth, with all its potential for pain and glory – to see what secrets those moments can reveal to us. And we can use the traditional rules of electional astrology as we might use candles or any other ritual device, not as an inoculation against life but as an invocation to align ourselves with a greater wisdom. And that’s not such a bad use for astrology.