Double take how do avoid making it feel like a rerun.

I agree with you that I would do a different dress and save the main vows for the big wedding (just do standard vows for the elopement). You don’t want the big “ceremony” to just feel like a performance of the elopement

View Quoted Comment Yes exactly. And I dont want FH to feel like welp I already saw you in your dress so no big woop. Still so many things to decide.
Also if we only do one ceremony (elopement most likely in my backyard) and have a reception later, should I Wear the big wedding dress or save for reception.

I originally bought two dresses because the main one was a tad tight. Our wedding was cancelled due to the virus and we have now decided to just elope in the comfort of my parents home. No music, no friends, just the four of us. Because it won't be spectacular, I plan on wearing my back up dress for our little ceremony. That way, when I can plan another wedding...I can still feel like a real bride, in my original dress, and celebrate the way it should have been celebrated all along.

View Quoted Comment Yea. I agree. Im looking online for a second dress. Nothing over the top. Just a nice white dress.

This is my exact worry! I still want all the specialness and meaningfulness that comes with the traditional wedding I had always dreamed of and worry that an elopement or private ceremony will take away from the bigger day. I don't like the idea of calling it a vow renewal, I want to call it my wedding! I feel like I need to come up with better names for both events. My fiance suggested "private wedding" and "public wedding", haha, very romantic. I think part of my problem is my mom is trying to make the private ceremony as much like the "public" one as she can, like suggesting I wear the same dress in a different color (I almost bought the pink version). But I feel the more the private ceremony tries to be the original ceremony I planned on, the less special the big day will be!


I'm curious to see how other people are managing to retain the specialness of both days.

View Quoted Comment So FH said he wanted to get married in vegas after we had to cancel but now he changes his mind. So we are going to have a courthouse elopement in june. The ceremony for elopement will be simple and as traditional as it gets. I will wear a plain & simple white wedding dress. We will save all the good stuff for our actual church ceremony: our written vows, our special unity ceremonies and my wedding dress.

My fiancé and I are having an elopement of sorts with just our parents and siblings; we’re disguising it as taking engagement & family photos! Next year sometime we’ll have a more grandiose affair, but I’m wearing something elegant and simple for our first ceremony. This is the dress, but in ivory. Maxi length with a split. I live on an island so we’ll be getting married on a small beach. Our vows will be the traditional “do you take this man to be your husband” kind this year, and next year we are going to write our own to each other. That way each moment has special and unique aspects.

View Quoted Comment Very nice! I agree on the traditional vows and saving everything else for later. I think I have found my dress, im going to buy this one with a sash and a bridal hair clip.

One thing you might want to think about too is pictures. Are you planning on your 'official' wedding pictures to be the ones at the bigger ceremony with everyone? That would be my deciding factor, and I'd wear the dress to whichever one is the one that will be photographed

We had to change our plans to a courthouse wedding, with a reception/celebration of our marriage to be held at a later date with local guests. I'm personally planning to wear my wedding dress to the courthouse .

We're going to go and take pictures after in the park, because I want to have good ones to look back on and fondly remember the day. That's what's important to me though, and we're not planning a vow renewal/second ceremony. Plus it gives us the bonus of getting our photographer at the wedding anyways, just at the courthouse not our original venue.

So I'm doing almost the opposite of you, since I'll probably wear a simpler dress at the celebration with local guests

View Quoted Comment Thanks for mentioning the point about pictures and yea sounds like you are doing the opposite. Our photographer is a friend of a friend and we dont plan on asking him to come to the courthouse. We already live 45min-1hour away and the county courthouse we would be going to is 30min farther away from where we live (so about 1hr30min) we are going to have family take pics of us and video during the ceremony. Also we are trying to go to the courthouse on our anniversary date which is on a Thursday so not sure if all of our immediate family will be able to attend due to work. I definitely want pics of all the family at our church after our church 2nd ceremony so I will wait to use our photographer & videographer.


I would definitely do things ur way if we weren’t having a 2nd ceremony but unfortunately if we cancel we lose all our money so we have to postpone.

I would probably wear something more casual for the elopement, if it comes to that (and we've already decided to do that if we have to postpone the big celebration). I have a cute little white lace dress I bought for the bachelorette that is probably what I would wear.

Honestly, I think that would be enough difference for me. I mean, we would try to reschedule with our venue and most of the decor wouldn't be used until then, so I think that would make the renewal/re-do different enough.

I would want to do our personalized vows at the elopement. Those are for US and I would not want to hold off on those for everyone else. To save those for the postponed ceremony would make them feel more like a performance to me. I'd rather either repeat our vows, use a standard ceremony format, or maybe write new personalized renewal vows instead.

View Quoted Comment I agree. I honestly dont have any white dresses or else I would use something else I already have but I still want to wear white even for the elopement. Online shopping (just browsing) has been a little bit of a mental therapy for me lol. And thats a good point for the personalized vows, I guess FH and I will decide together on what we should do. We have some unity stuff that we wanted to do we could do personal vows for the elopement and unity for church ceremony that way each one still feels special.

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We're planning on a unity candle piece for our ceremony too. I like the idea of saving that for the bigger ceremony, and keeping our personal vows for the smaller ceremony, if needed.

View Quoted Comment Yea thats a good idea

Married on March 28. I am definitely doing a different dress for the ‘second’ wedding, which will be the dress I planned to wear at our reception (which was supposed to be April 25). My original gown, though I loved it, turned out to be more cumbersome than I thought it would be. It had a mermaid cut lace bottom, which constantly caught on my heels and was hard to pose with to keep it spread out. Our wedding was supposed to be on the beach and us both barefoot, same dress with him in dark suit and tie. We ended up on a beautiful lawn and me wearing heels. It was a beautiful day!!

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Wow that’s a gorgeous dress!! Enjoy your special day!!

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Lovely!! Enjoy your special day!!

View Quoted Comment Nice congrats! So you had a ceremony dress and reception dress? I have a reception outfit but will only change towards the last half of the reception.

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I had actually purchased four dresses. One white formal, two a little less formal n white and in ivory (couldn’t decide!) and one blue for photos on the beach with island theme the day before. Of course all that went out the window with cancellation of beach wedding. Wore formal on our wedding day with change of venue and city. Likely will wear ivory dress for reception. Maybe. Decisions, decisions 😃

View Quoted Comment Lol well you most certainly have options! My reception outfit is a party outfit from fashionnova very glittery gold and I plan to wear my veil with it (which is an indian scarf) i will drape it over my outfit. My wedding dress is nice but im pretty sure that by the end of the night the beading might bother my arms. (One night when I went out I wore a dress w hella sequin and after a few hours & dancing my arms got tore uppp the sequin literally started scratching me and slicing me everytime i moved my arms. By the end of the night I couldn’t dance i could only fat joe lean back because my arms hurt so bad)