Ceremony if Married

After seeing multiple people who have done that on this site, and it go terribly wrong, I would highly suggest not doing this. If you want to get married beforehand, be honest with your family and friends. There is nothing wrong with eloping, then having a ceremony and reception to celebrate later.

Exactly what Cece said. If you don't want to wait, then go ahead and get married and tell people that's what you're doing - no one likes to be lied to.

Try to be patient and keep the date you had planned. The ceremony is not that far away and there is all the planning and payments made. I think that delay and waiting period is part of the process and the reward of the planning.

If you do actually go with the quick marriage, you would just do the invites as a public celebration of your marriage. If people then know you are already married, they have the choice about joining the later celebration or not.

I in agreed with CeCe why do the whole planning a ceremony and exchanging of rings again. Just have the officiant to just announce you both again Mr.&Mrs. And if you want to wear the wedding attire and have reception if you have paid on things.But dont lie and if you haven't done the invites yet just put it as a continuing in with the celebration

My opinion is very different on this one! My (now husband) and I got legally married this past weekend for legal purposes. It makes the legality of things, taxes, homeowners, and with having children much easier! I told a few family members, and they all said it was a very smart thing to do (as we have a baby due before the wedding)! Quite honestly, its no one's business except your own, and if they get mad over some minor details, then are they really as supportive as you think? We are saving the vows and dress and everything for our wedding ceremony, and don't expect the fact that were already legally married to change a thing!

I second Noelle. I have 2 pairs of couple friends that got married legally solely for tax and home-buying purposes, but they’re still having their Buddhist temple/Catholic church ceremonies and receptions this November. Neither couple has received bad reactions to this.

If you want to get legally married beforehand and have a subsequent ceremony as if you're not married, that is fine. People do that for destination weddings all the time. Call it a wedding, vow renewal, celebration of marriage, whatever you want. A hired officiant won't care either way. Guests are being hosted the same either way. My friend got married at the courthouse during covid, and she's referring to her bigger celebration as a wedding. I'm not offended or feeling misled.


The part that gets weird is where you want to actively hide your marital status from everyone, as if only 1 to 2 people are good enough to be in on this super odd secret. This isn't intimate and special. If I had learned about this, I'd be assuming you got married early so you could start having premarital sex guilt free, and kept it a secret to hide this fact. I wouldn't be offended, but I'd be rolling my eyes
Unless you want to get married now for practical, legal purposes, I don't see why you'd go thru the hassle of an extra trip to the courthouse and lying to your nearest and dearest.

We're doing the legal ceremony in town before the end of the year for pretty practical reasons:

1) we're doing a destination wedding so in order to avoid some seriously complicated requirements, we're doing local first

2) we're putting me on my fiancé's health insurance, which renews about two weeks prior to our end of January wedding.

3) taxes. If we can file jointly, we can get a few more breaks.

All this adds up to us going through with the legal ceremony mid to end of December with the actual wedding at the end of January. Most people know about this plan, and I dont think anyone would feel duped if they didn't know because its still us celebrating regardless.

I had friends that did that for the exact same reason.

If you decide to do this (and yay!), I would be authentic with your family and friends. I'm not sure you would want to start your marriage off on deception. We get lots of posts here from family hurt about being mislead. People are very likely to find out.

Agreed with Willow. What Erin and Noelle did differently is they didn't actively keep a secret. Also, if you're not getting married destination then the destination comment is completely irrelevant. There are many great reasons to get married earlier as aforementioned, but pretending like it didn't happen will eventually get out and I would be very frustrated if I found this out.

I would absolutely still go to the the celebration, but the fact that the couple failed to tell everybody it was a celebration of their marriage versus a wedding is just oddly deceitful and wouldn't sit right with me. There are some viral videos of couples who postponed their wedding due to covid and didn't tell anyone they got married a year ago until their date, in a "surprise! this is actually a 1 year anniversary party!" and I cringe so hard.

If I was you, I'd just wait because it's less than 6 months away!!! You're almost there girl, stick it out! If you do decide to get married, I would put something on your website about it!

My friend had a wedding several years ago in which she was already married. Well, word got out shortly after we all just thought we witnessed them get married. Many guests including me were insulted and angry. Several family members didn’t speak to her and her husband for a while. Be honest about your vow renewal if you choose not to wait.

My husband and I did this a year and a half before our wedding. Only told bridal parties, and immediate family. A lot of people on these threads say negative things, but we have experienced no negativity in this scenario. Most of our friends have done it this way too for one reason or another.

We plan to surprise the guests who dont know at out wedding. We dont expect anyone to react negatively, and if they did we probably wouldnt want them there in the first place. Our families have all been massively supportive and happy for us with this decision.

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Fully agree. I think the last few years have really made people think outside tradition. No one shows up to a wedding to see the legal paper signing anyway. Its no ones business but our own. Plenty of celebrations of milestones happen after the fact.

You know your crowd better than all of us, so how do you think your guests would react? Personally, I know plenty of people who would be really hurt if something like that was covered up, and even more so if they found out some people knew but not others (and you should plan on that secret getting out, because they inevitably tend to get out). I think the posters here have shown that people aren't always receptive to this kind of thing.

Is there a reason other than just not wanting to wait? 5 months will fly by faster than you think.

View Quoted Comment I completely agree that these things tend to get out. Not to mention, it is placing the people who know the secret in a compromising position- The couple would basically be asking those who know to lie or be deceptive to their family and friends. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable putting my loved ones in that position.

My wedding is October 2023 and we got legally married last month- over a year before the wedding! We were going to keep it a total secret- exactly what you're planning- but as soon as we actually got married, we were so excited, we totally changed our minds and decided to tell everyone. We're still going to have a big wedding with a ceremony and vows and a ring exchange and all that! I don't think there's a "right" way to do this but I agree with others that pretending not to be married is hard. And this way, people get to be excited for you twice

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Have you already reserved many things with vendors?

It definitely isn't tacky, but I probably wouldn't keep it a secret from your friends and family. You don't need to formally tell them all, but I wouldn't actively hide it from them.

We had to get legally married ahead of the 'big day' as our venue isn't licenced for legal ceremonies. As a result we got to have a formal, serious ceremony with just our two witnesses at the registry office and a big, funny, quirky ceremony with all our friends and family present.

I will say one thing that I think is super important though - getting the 'legal stuff' out of the way before the official wedding day really helped us both immensely in terms of the emotional/mental side of things. It completely took away the last minute nerves and allowed us to really just enjoy celebrating our union with our nearest and dearest.

I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially if you're prone to being a bit of a worrier!

I am getting legally married 4 days before our planned wedding. My FH is Catholic and insists on the marriage being validated by the church. I am not Catholic and still want the wedding that was planned. So, two ceremonies it is! No one seems to care so far.