Any tips on small wedding before a big wedding?

A wedding is when you marry someone. Therefore, it sounds like you're wanting a small wedding and then a vow renewal.

We just met with our chaplain today. He told us he has to bless marriages all the time. It's common for military couples to get married before the wedding for logistics and legal reasons (insurance and benefits for military spouses are very different if you are unmarried). He did say, in this situation all he can do is reaffirm or bless the marriage.

If you do this, be upfront with your guests. Call it what it is, "a blessing/reaffirmation of marriage."

Basically you would be having your small wedding, and then a vow renewal with your family if you did this. Since you would already be legally married, you won't be able to have another "wedding" but you could do a vow renewal/blessing of the marriage and have a reception with family and friends later if you would like. Whatever you do, be honest with all of the guests invited to the vow renewal and tell them all that you already got married at the military base but you decided to do a vow renewal so friends/family could be there with you since they couldn't attend they actual ceremony.

Are any of your family members going to be upset they weren't invited to your actual wedding, that only a select group of friends got to witness it?

This is super common in the military. I say go for it, but definitely be upfront with your family and friends back home- it's not ok to lie about it, and believe me when I say the truth always comes out!

I see this all the time. Be upfront with everyone and enjoy celebrating with both your military family and your friends and family back home. Also, if you haven't already done so consider taking a class through your FH's post, most have introduction briefings for spouses, it is a fantastic way to get introduced to resources, services, and benefits. Glad you already have friends at the post, a strong military community and family is important.

That's actually what I meant by "wedding". Lol. If we actually get married here and have our actual ceremony with our family. So we will be legally married but have a ceremony of an actual wedding but just be renewing vows. If that makes sense.

I think you were plenty clear. The ACS or your FH's Chaplain may have leads on a class you can take to get a discount on your marriage license, depending on the state, but it should also get your FH some time off work for you both to go to said class.

Yes Karley, since you will already be married and just renewing vows as you said it would be a vow renewal since a wedding is when you become legally married in the first place. It's completely fine to do that, and it's very common to do that in the military. Like I said before, the only thing is to be honest with all of your guests at the vow renewal that you are already legally married.

One of his Sgt's would be marrying us here and then May of next year we would have our actual big ceremony but it would be a vow renewal. We planned on sending our invites out with our actual date we were married and where we were married at, then inviting our guests to join us for the vow renewal and reception. So it's not weird? Once we are married, we can apply for our benefits and such, being it takes awhile for all of that to go through. Then we will be looking into the finance classes they have here at his base.

In the civilian world it might be odd, but it's much easier to save money on married pay than single soldier pay. Not weird, and you're being upfront about it, I don't see a thing wrong with it. Just remember that life happens, so you may not end up getting the ceremony/ reception of your dreams, especially doing it in that order. I speak from experience.