Brides who legally married before your wedding...Need Advice.

I was planning on doing something smiliar getting married in a month and then getting married in may 2012

Are you still planning on doing it? What are your thoughts on how you'd address telling people ect?

We aren't going to make a big deal of our civil ceremony to everyone. To us, it will be huge and we are having a photog and everything, but to close friends and family it's just a legal formatility- just one thing checked off our list before the wedding.

We'll change our marital status where it matters (government forms, work, etc.) but for personal things like FB we are going to keep it low key. Our friends and family will know, but we aren't going to announce that information in everyone's faces until after the wedding, especially because there are a lot of people on FB that aren't invited to the wedding.. It saves on questions.

That's exactly how I am feeling as well Jen. We also plan to have a photographer. What are you planning on wearing for it? I am still unsure. Will you showcase your photographs from the civil ceremony at your wedding to incorporate it? Is it just the two of you or will you have guest/witnesses? Undecided on that as well, his family is here and mine in the US so my family will not be but uncertain if we want to keep it private or include his Mom, Dad, Sister.

This is what I plan to wear from UrbanOutfitters! It's not as short on me as it is the model, but I looove it. Our fathers will be our witnesses since there can only be a max of 6 people in the room including us. It will be us, our fathers and our photographer and POSSIBLY someone to film it (eh) and then we're going out with our bridal party for a mini celebratory dinner.

I'm treating these photos like my e-pics. The more obvious photos I'll save to display at the wedding, and the less obvious ones I will probably share with family.. we'll have a shoot after the ceremony (which the ceremony will probably be all of 5 minutes) of just us in Seattle, like we would have for our E-pics anyway and she's charging us for so.

I was going to get legally married befor the wedding. It was going to be on our 2 year anni and it was going to just be me, FH, my sister and his BM but my mother fownd out and almost cryed so I had to change my plains.

When I was going to do that I planed on not telling anyone.

I got married August 13, 2010. We just disappeared that night and he came back with a ring on his hand. His family knew right away, and boy were they angry. They do not like me. They've made it clear. People asked me, and I continued to tell them we were not married. I changed my name on facebook and told everyone that someone was harassing me. It wasn't a complete lie, my ex was pressuring me to get back with him. I eventually told everyone a month after it happened. When we got married legally, we promised ourselves that we'd have a wedding in front of everyone when we have the money. We've already told everyone the date and told those we want there that they will be getting invites.

We got legally married two months ago on our anniversary and went to "celebrate" alone where we had our first date 9 years ago. Our wedding reception is next month.

We told close relatives and friends. It will be announced during the wedding reception. For us, it hasn't been a big deal. Most of our friends and family are thinking "well, geez, about time!" No feathers seemed to be ruffled.

What I love about what we did is our "wedding anniversary" (date we got married on paper) will the same date as our bf/gf/couple anniversary... Plus neither one of us have gotten cold feet with the reception coming up. It's one less thing to fuss about during our reception.

I am not a fan of people who do this personally. I've had some friends in my past life who did this and didn't tell anyone they were married and went through the sham of a ceremony and pretended they were just getting married. When i found out the truth I was beyond upset. If you are going to insist on doing this them let everyone know.

I'd have to agree with Glenn on this - I think if my friend got legally married and didn't tell me I would be pretty upset as well. I just don't really understand the reasoning behind it I guess.

I do not plan on my civil wedding being a secret or lying to anyone bc I also agree it"s not right. Having a civil ceremony is something we must do bc of our circumstances living abroad ( in Germany and most EU countries you are required to have a civil ceremony first and then have a spiritual ceremony following) but in our case we won't be able to have our spiritual ceremony with family and friends until a year and 3 months later due to living abroad, time off ect. Trust me, I'd rather just do it only once but I have come to terms with both and this is important part of being married to my FH bc this is the "idea" he's always known when it comes to weddings...it's "normal" to have a civil one first for him/his family. While this ceremony will be special for us, all of my family and close friends already know we are planning on having a civil ceremony and are just as excited about attending our ceremony in 2013, they know and understand our situation/reasoning behind it.

My original question is mainly about telling the world we are married, anyone outside of our close group. Of course if I was ever asked, I would not lie. Just don't feel I'd want to update my FB ect to announce it to unnecessary people until after the actual wedding. Just curious as to how others went about it or plan to go about it...

Thanks for all the feedback so far

A friend of mine also got married with just the two of them and did not announce it. Close friends and family knew, but she changed her fb status after their wedding reception a year-and-a-half later. They do not acknowledge their civil ceremony at all-not even between themselves. They only celebrate their big wedding reception date.

For us, we're not doing a ceremony at all (not previously, not in the future, not ever), so in no way do I feel like it's a "sham". All we're doing is a reception.

I agree with Ginny re: FB. I don't think I need to broadcast my life to all my FB friends. We proactively told close friends and family. For the rest of the people, if anyone asks, sure I'll tell them.

We live in New Zealand, all our family live in the UK. My husband is not religious and felt marrying in church was hypocritical for him. Very few of the people we wanted to be with us would be able to travel to NZ, so we were open with family from the beginning that we would marry in a Civil service in NZ (also way cheaper) and have a blessing in church in the UK. Everyone was cool with that. When we set a date for the civil service, we told everyone back home - that is our wedding date and the one we celebrate. Everyone was just so pleased that we were doing it - even though we only gave them 24 hours notice! It was a perfect spring day, I carried peonies from our garden, wore my Grandma's 1940's silk skirt suit and had a few friends to witness. Low key and full of laughter. Our church blessing is 7 January 2012 in Edinburgh.

We were married a month before our DW at a relative's house. It was just for our family members so there were only 30 people. We threw it together in 3 weeks. I didn't feel right going to the JOP, so we had a fun night. I wasn't going to wear my dress, but I did Not all of our family was able to come to the DW so it was perfect. We didn't hide it from our friends, but we didn't really broadcast it. They like to tease us when we bicker that, hey, you guys got married TWICE.