[snip] I've a DATE column in MySQL with a row, say "2005-12-1". I want to return the following string: Thursday, 1 - 2 December 2005 Is that possible with MySQL functions, or do I have to get PHP to do that? [/snip] You can use MySQL's DATE_FORMAT() function http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html