A Pi Day wedding, and other goings on about town

Math nerds around the world will celebrate a once-in-a-century Pi Day Saturday, when the date, 3-14-15, corresponds with the first five digits of the irrational number.

The never-ending, never-repeating figure expresses the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

For one local couple, the first five digits will also have a more personal significance: their wedding date.

Veronica Lunking, who lives in University City, and her fiancé John Hansen, were planning a big, traditional wedding for sometime next year when they decided recently it wasn’t for them.

“So we decided, hey it’s really cool to have our wedding on Pi Day this year,” Lunking said.

“We’re not like math addicts or anything like that, we just thought…it would be fun and interesting and different. We’re not traditional people, so a traditional wedding just kind of felt weird.”

Their small, parents-only ceremony will start at an Old City hotel at 9:26, the next three digits of Pi.

“If we’re going to go, go all the way,” Lunking said.

At their reception, the happy couple will slice pie, instead of cake, and have seven dozen mini pies about the size of cupcakes for their guests to taste.

The big one will be banana cream, with Mr. and Mrs. PAC-MAN on top (they look like pies missing a slice), and the seven dozen mini pies will include bourbon butterscotch, lemon curd and triple chocolate.

Lunking said she and her intended, a cook, are big foodies, so the wedding date was probably more inspired by all those dessert pies than the numerical kind.

Magpie, a bakery on South Street, is providing the pies for the reception. They said for their storefront, they are making about five times as many as for a usual weekend. They sold out hours before closing last March 14.

Elsewhere in the region, educational institutions are marking the once-every-hundred-years occasion with less personal, but slightly more math-centric events.

Princeton, which throws a joint party for Pi Day and Einstein’s birthday each year, will have a day packed full of events. They include a pie-eating contest, Pi-themed bike ride (9.8 miles long, or pi-squared), and an Einstein look-alike competition.

In Philadelphia, kids can make pies and do hands-on math activities at the Central branch of the Philadelphia Public Library, and calculate Pi and launch pie at the Franklin Institute.