already married by court and trying to keep it on the DL for the REAL wedding

Does your church already know you're married? In my church they won't marry (or do a renewal of vows) if someone is already married... If you've already wed don't you already have the legal documents and a marriage cert? I think I'm confused...sorry!

No don't apologize I'm doing the confusing haha. We do have the certificate, but it has a date of about 2 years ago on it, and we do not want anyone to find out we were already married... So how would we get around anyone finding out? if at all possible.

That would be hard..but why did you get married by court already without telling them first?

Lane- you would either have to let your pastor know and ask him to please keep it a secret or you have to find another minister to do and let them know there is no need to sign anything becasue it is already taken care of. im assuming ur close friend who is a pastor would know that there is some reason he isn't signing anything

So are you trying to do a type of renewal of vows but trying to make it look like a wedding? What type of church is it? and I'm assuming they don't know you're already married. Are they willing to do the ceremony the way you want it if they already know?

See if they will allow it and not disclose that info. Then you can get a keepsake certificate for signing.

I'm so happy you posted this because I did the same thing! I did it to get health converage under my FH because I was really sick a month ago. Just pretend it never happened. To me that wasn't real and I put it out of my mind. I never told any family because I didnt want it to cheapen the wedding but no one knows and it all worked out...just forget about it and concentrate on the real wedding!

You'll be fine with the church they won't know/mind, I looked into it because Im having a small church wedding after my real wedding in the Bahamas and they said it would be fine.

Technically since you are already married, you will be doing a vow renewal. You had your real wedding at the courthouse. Personally I think you need to be honest with everyone and tell the truth. Someone is bound to find out and will be upset that they have been deceived. You better tell your priest ASAP, so he can advise you what to do.

I think you will likely have to the priest...he is going to expect to have to sign and file the marriage license. You can tell him confidentially (lol if you are catholic you could spring it on him in the middle of confession, they can't tell what is said in there!!! - i don't say this meaning you have something to confess, but just from the what's said in confession stays in confession sort of way).

I'de say be ready to explain why you decided to marry in the court and keep it from your family...and why it's important for you to get married in the church now. If you are catholic, in the eyes of the church you aren't married (becuase marriage is a sacrament, and only sacramental marriage "counts" from the church's standpoint so the church is happy to have you bring your marriage into the church!!!! and the process of getting the marriage bless as sacramental is similar to any other marriage).

I'm sorry if that sounds babbly...if you aren't catholic you can pretty much ignore

The priest will ask for the marriage certificate to sign. I am really surprised they haven't gone over this with you, but if he is a close family friend than I am guessing he assumed you weren't married already. When we were filing the correct papers to get a date at our church (Catholic) we needed two witnesses to sign and testify to a notary that we were not married to protect the church in case we were married already or were not disclosing info that should have been discussed. Why are you so adament on lieing to your family and your priest. I guess if you want to save face you just have to keep coming up with more lies to tell...to the priest...and your parents...and the dozens (hundreds?) of people you are inviting to your vow renewal. My advice-come clean and deal with the consequences. If it is a Catholic church, they won't deny you the sacrament of marriage but I would think you would want to enter into the sacrament with a guilt-free conscience.

That's right, your witnesses have to sign, so now you have to tell them in addition to the priest.

Are you Catholic? Did you do marriage prep? I am surprised this didn't come up during your marriage prep. In fact we had to fill out a form asking whether we were married or had been married before.

Technically, if you are civilly married and want to have a Catholic marriage it's called a marriage convalidation. I think the paperwork is different than when you are having a regular marriage. You should contact the church ASAP to make sure your paperwork is in order otherwise you won't be "officially married" in the eyes of the church.

I don't know if the priest will use different wording during your ceremony or not, you may want to check with him directly. Unfortunately I think your options are 1) coming clean to your guests, or 2) hoping nobody is paying attention or notices his choice of words.

As for the marriage license ours was signed AFTER the ceremony (and we almost forgot to do it!) so nobody will miss it if you dont' do it during the ceremony.

My FH and I have talked about getting married for years prior to now for various reason and not telling our families but the only reason we never went through with it was because of your current situation. When we finally did tell the family and have have a ceremony we did not want to tell our families that we had already done it or it would break there hearts and/or piss them off. One idea, and i dont know that it can be done. Is to ask someone very close to you (a friend) become ordained (you can do it online for a small fee) to marry you and your "FH". When it comes time for the signing of the certificate and from your witnesses have them go about it as if you were really getting married and tell the friend that married you and your "FH" that YOU will file the paperwork and then simply not file it. Keep the certificate as a keep sake or destroy all evidence LOL. A lot of people are having friends/family become ordained so I dont think it would look suspicious.

Depending on the state the officiant may have to file the paperwork...so pretending may not work! I think you just need to be honest with the person who is officiant.

Wow you know I'm noticing alot of judgement from ppl here. Your not hurting anyone and it's a freaking piece of paper, you want ppl to celebrate the joining not all the petty details.. You should tell the priest then get a keep sake certificate and not worry about it.

I'm in the same position (sorta) my mom knows but most of the rest of the fam doesnt know. we got married at my mom s house by a priest. he filled out the marriage lic. info and sent it to the state and we got it back a few weeks later. We're getting married again in Sept in front of all of our family, the diff. is we're doing a ceremony on site at the hotel/venue and having one of my MOH's friends do it for $100. She's ordained and everything.. but she wont ask to sign anything (cuz its already signed) its just a show for the rest of the family.

Oh..yeah.. as Tiffany said, the priest who came to my house won't marry us the 2nd time, even as a vowel renewal..i know nothing about religion really..at but they have rules! so.. i have a feeling unless u can hire someone outside the church that you could pay a fee to "marry" you, you're gonna be stuck. Your wedding is VERY soon... i am highly recommending that you do some serious research and figure things out ASAP. you dont have a lot of time!!

To the people who think that you are not hurting anyone by lying to them, they are wrong. My sister did just this and I have never been more devastated. We didn't talk for 6 months and had to work very hard to get the relationship back to where it was (it's still not there, 3 years later). Plus, I don't trust her husband at all because while I am nearly positive that it was my sister's idea, I still harbor ill will towards him for going along with it.

But, that's not what you asked. I agree that you should just come clean with whoever is going to perform the vow renewal. That is the only person who can guide you through this. You will have to trust this close family friend to continue to keep your secret. And like other PP have suggested, the church may provide a sacrament of marriage which it seems like what you really want. Good luck!

I think normally it's not a big deal but if it's through a church then she DEFINITELY needs to come clean. Otherwise the church may not recognize the marriage as valid and that totally defeats the purpose of having a church wedding in the first place.