Catholic church wedding - did anyone do a "covid style" wedding with ceremony & reception on different days?

First of all OP, I sorry to hear about your grandfather-in-law’s cancer diagnosis and can appreciate how difficult the news must have been to receive.

As to your query, is your reception in the church? Unless your crowd are very religious themselves or the reception is in the church, it would strike me as a bit out of place to have a religious aspect at the reception as the reception is quite a festive aspect of the wedding being a celebration of the marriage.

Sorry to hear about the diagnosis. I'd do what a lot of military couples, covid couples, or destination weddings do out of necessity.


Have your grandpa in law marry you in the church asap with the bare minimum people-probably immediate family only. Wear the whatever white and budget friendly dress you can get now. Something you'd wear for an elopement. After the ceremony, take everyone out to eat.
Then have the big wedding/vow renewal/celebration you would have had if not for the diagnosis, in your planned dress. I'd clear with the church that they'll let you have such a ceremony despite being legally married

View Quoted Comment Some of the family is religious and we as a couple are religious. The reception is not at the church, not even in the same town, I just feel like weddings around here are very traditional (and we always wanted a traditional wedding) so doing the reception without a mass preceding it doesn't feel right. I mean, I want my bridal party to get to walk down the aisle and all that standard stuff so without it would feel very lacking. But at the same time, his grandpa getting to marry us is #1 priority over all that.

I'm so sorry to hear about your fiancé's grandfather.
We were in a similar situation. After we booked our venue and date some health concerns arose with my mother-in-law. We weren't sure she'd be able to attend our wedding as planned. We did a small church ceremony with just our immediate family then took them to dinner at our favorite restaurant. Like your situation I didn't have time to get a wedding gown so I bought an inexpensive long white dress to wear. I bought a headpiece and veil on Amazon for not a lot of money (and used them again for the reception). We only had a maid of honor and best man for that ceremony. We did flowers and hired a photographer. It was a beautiful day. We still wanted the big wedding though, as did a lot of people who weren't invited to the small one lol.Thanks to COVID our reception ended up being 2 years later. I got a real wedding gown, had a bridal party, the whole nine yards. We did a ceremony to reaffirm our vows with a justice of the peace at our reception venue then went into the cocktail hour/reception. I was afraid it would feel weird or not as special but I was wrong. Everyone was very excited for the big celebration and having already been married didn't take away anything from our day. We don't regret a thing!! We loved both celebrations for different reasons and are so happy that we did both.
Do what will make you both happy and don't worry about what others might think. They aren't in your situation.