Frequently I like to make data more user friendly, so while I make it easy for them to add a date as a shorthand format (mm/dd/yyyy) I like to return it as something easier to digest (Day of Month in Year, etc). This is the simplest way to do that I've found

list($day, $month, $year) = split('/', $date);
echo date('l, F jS ',  mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year));