Deep diving wedding astrology with half of the Astrotwins

Today we're gonna do something a lil different — we're going to gossip about wedding astrology with an astrology pro who's been in the biz for decades. I sat down with Tali Edut here in Seattle, and we gossiped about using the lunar cycle to pick your wedding day, super couples, and if Pluto could affect how polyamory shows up in popular culture.

Hey, Tali! For folks who may not know you: who are you, and what have you been up to lately?

Well, I am one half of the Astrotwins, with my identical twin sister, Ophira. We write over at our website astrostyle.com, and we're also the astrologers and matchmakers for the new Amazon Prime show, Cosmic Love. Oh, and we've been the official astrologers for Elle Magazine since 2008. 

Dang! You've been at this for a long time, woman… All this, AND you’re an old-school Offbeat reader?!

That's true! I was living in New York and wanting to find a partner and get married. I was working with a coach, and she told me, “Go collage your ideal wedding.”

I pulled up some Martha Stewart photos, and I was like, this is so depressing! So my coach put me to work on finding a wedding style that actually inspired me. And that's how I found Offbeat Bride [as it was known then]. 

I wound up going to Burning Man, meeting my husband, and moving to Seattle to be with him… I didn't even realize you lived in Seattle until we sat next to each other at that co-working space!

That was such a wild moment! Ok, so let's talk wedding astrology. Tell me how the moon and its gravitational pull might affect people's wedding schedules. 

Yes! I made the mistake of getting married on a full moon. 

Oh, shit, girl! 

I was thinking… it'll be exciting! It'll be adventurous to get married at Burning Man under a full moon. But honestly, it was a little bit too much. 

When picking a wedding date, the question is: do you want a low-tide wedding or a high-tide wedding? 

If you want your wedding to feel more calm and more placid, time your wedding date closer to a new moon. I love New Moon weddings. 

Right before a new moon though is not recommended. That last little sliver of light is called the balsamic moon. It's the final of the eight moon phases; a waning crescent. If you think about balsamic vinegar, it's kind of like that. Things get a little tart during that time of the lunar cycle. It’s like planetary PMS.

Can you share a bit about how Sun signs can be used in your wedding planning? 

YES! You can plan your wedding by your sign. For example, while an Aquarian might like to have a lot of people around them, if they're marrying a cancer, they may want to have a big party after a more intimate ceremony. We have a whole wedding planner folks can use!

I’ve heard that Pluto is moving into an interesting place, and I'd love to hear about your thoughts on Pluto and polyamory…

Definitely. So Pluto is the ruler of Scorpio. It is the planet of sex and intimacy and bonding, the planet of swearing forever and ever “till death, do us part.” Because Pluto orbits so far away from the Sun, it stays in a sign for 12 to 20 years. This means that whenever it moves, it's a big deal. It shifts society, culture, everything. 

So, Pluto is moving into Aquarius for a little while in 2023 (from March 23rd to June 11th), and then again, in 2024 for another 19 years. 

We're starting this 20 years cycle next year of Pluto in Aquarius… and Aquarius is the is the polyamory sign! It's all about love without limits, and universal love. We’re seeing relationships fall apart at the end of Pluto. It's like these old relational structures from the industrial era are falling away.

We’re seeing that for a lot of people, it doesn't make sense to do relationships in that established way anymore. And so I think people are gonna come out of the closet from these more traditional relationship structures. I’ll be curious to see how it goes.

Me too! Ok, so we're both aging Gen X ladies, but how do you think Gen Z is approaching astrology and their relationships differently?

It's the same and it's different. Astrology is always been the ultimate magic decoder ring for “why are they doing that?” Human beings across generations still mystify each other in relationships and we still wonder why what makes them tick. 

I think the difference is really our tools of the trade and our comfort with it. As Gen Xers, we had books and magazines. Millennials had a little more of an advantage because they had blogs and early social media. Gen Z folks have their apps. 

For us Gen Xers, we just had sun signs. I remember learning my moon sign and trying to talk about it and people just like, what are you talking about? 

When my sister and I first started writing about moon signs, it was groundbreaking for people… now everyone has the Co-Star app, or Snapchat will do your whole chart! When people start dating, they know that there are more nuances than just asking someone's sun sign.

Speaking of, talk to me about this concept of how our relationships have their own charts. 

This was something my sister and I used when we were doing the matchmaking for Cosmic Love, the Amazon Prime TV show we were just a part of. 

There were four main characters who were getting matched with 16 other singles. My sister and I went through all these charts, and created the blended chart of the two people. This was the chart for who they became when they were together. 

It's called a composite chart. I take your birthday and your partner’s birthday and if we were to meet astrologically in the middle, that’s the birthdate of this third entity: the relationship. 

If your sun sign is Taurus, and their sun sign is in Scorpio, you'll probably combine into a Leo, right in the middle there. We call it a Super Couple Chart and we have a tool for calculating yours.

Sometimes, we might think that we should be doing what the other person wants, or what we want… but the composite chart actually has a whole care and feeding manual of its own! The relationship has these hidden needs, separate from the individuals in the relationship. 

It's great to pull that chart before a wedding – these Super Couple Charts are also great wedding astrology gift! Your relationship’s chart can point to your shared mercury, which is like… here's the communication we need. Or your relationship’s Venus will be your shared love language. 

Interesting! So in the same way that talking about a prenup can be a starting point for a fascinating conversation, this feels like a unique way to get into some interesting topics… even if half the couple isn't into astrology!

Yeah, I think it can be a great jumping-off point. Astrology isn’t a prescription, necessarily. A lot of people treat it that way, but I think it just opens the door. We’re all different. We know what's best for us. 

In the way that mindfulness is about observing your thoughts and being like, I'm not my thoughts, astrology can give me a way to get some perspective. “Oh, this experience I'm having today, may not be about me and my story, it may be part of some larger structure” …whether that's astronomical or socio-cultural.

Exactly. Astrology can also make it easier for couples to talk about difficult topics. If you're always bickering, and you discover that your composite Mercury is in Gemini… it may be that part of that bickering is just your style. We just like to go back and forth.

I love that! Astrology can help us step outside ourselves, and give us some distance between us and our stories about people. So if folks are interested, they can check out your website? 

Yes, there’s a free calculator and love quiz at supercouple.com… and we also just released our 2023 horoscope books last week!

Tali and I had so much fun talking that now we're considering doing an offbeat astrology / relationships podcast… Stay tuned!