Elope now, ceremony/reception to follow?

First off, there's a difference between hostility, and telling someone that something is a bad idea. People can be blunt sometimes but it's usually to keep people from making a bad mistake. If we all thought everything was a good idea, nobody would get any helpful feedback.

On to your question:

When you elope - that is your wedding.

What you're planning in December is not a wedding. It's a party to celebrate your marriage.

A vow renewal/celebration of your marriage/affirmation or consecration of your vows is 100% fine when you advertise it honestly. A pretend wedding is not fine. If you want to be a "bride" at the party in December, then don't elope and just be patient so you can have your actual wedding in front of your family and friends.

I'm curious why the sudden urge to elope, if you guys have been so up/down in your marriage readiness? I love my FH and want to get married too, but we set a date and stuck to it.

No sudden urge and I wouldn't say we've been up and down. We just weren't 100% sure or financially ready and now we are. We're not pregnant, I'm not panicking to get on his insurance, and it's not for tax reasons or anything else to do with money or an emergency, we just want to be married and I don't really see why that's a problem. What should it matter if we've already signed the papers before December? The wedding is really about the guests anyway. I wouldn't even consider it if our families were paying for the big day, but we are, so I don't feel that I'm inconveniencing anyone. And why is it such a big deal to wear a wedding dress at a wedding ceremony if you're already married? I've known people to renew their vows at 25 years and wear a bridal gown. Finally, my maid of honor's mother as well as my other bridesmaid's mother (read: mother in law) have already informed me that they will be pissed if their daughters don't get to wear their bridesmaid's dresses.

In reading a lot of these post, I wonder what law is being broken if a person wants to have 2 ceremonies?

Who cares if she has another wedding? Why can't they have an intimate ceremony for themselves and then have a wedding for the family? Why does it have to be so technical?

Ok so one bride set a date and stuck to it. She is deciding not to. SO WHAT? Who is she hurting? It's not like she's signing 2 marriage licenses. Only that would be breaking the law.

As I always say, do what makes you happy. You don't have to answer to ANYONE on WW, in your family, or any where else as to how you want to enter into your new chapter of life.

Ultimately, the decsion belongs to you and Your FH. When two people decide to get married, it's a decsion they are making together whether they have all the party stuff that goes along with it or not.

I have seen these discussion many times and I have seen alot of brides do the JOP thing and have the big wedding bash with family friends later down the road. It is just what worked out for them.

But in saying that, I do agree with Kris as well. If you get married now, in December it will just be a vow renewal/celebration of your marriage/affirmation or consecration of your vows.

How do you feel about it? If you honestly don't think it is such a big deal to do the whole wedding celebration when you are technically already married, then go for it. Do it that way. If you think there's any reason to doubt or question it, then maybe it's not what you should do.

Ultimately, it's for you and your FH to decide.

I am leaning towards Yardiegirl on this tho, do what pleases you. Like she said, as long as you are not signing 2 licenses(and I add not having officiants remarry you--this addition is solely based on religious views, cuz I know some pastors/priests dont believe in marrying already married couples, but do believe in vow renewal. So this is totally up to you and your religious views). Apart from that, I say do what makes you happy--No law to my understanding is being broken.

Really if you want to be a bride 800 times in your life, I say go for it! Lol, i wouldnt do it though but the point is, it is solely u and FH's decision.

Wow, the ladies over here are much kinder and more tolerant than women elsewhere. We were going to scrap the wedding altogether, but my mother was furious and just couldn't understand what the bridesmaids were going to do if they couldn't wear their dresses!!!! It was a little ridiculous...

Oh yea, if people have already started buying dresses...then you would need to either reimburse them for their purchase or have the wedding.

and you can do traditional vows in one ceremony and write your vows in the other to make it special if you like

We "eloped" to the Cayman Islands and I don't regret it at all. Our family was very supportive and happy for us and so were our friends. I had the most romatic dream beach wedding and a wonderful honeymoon....We are now planning our wedding celebration for April....although we won't be saying our vows again we will be having a slideshow and video playing at our venue. I'm so excited..and so happy. But you have to do what is best for you. Happy planning

I never said you shouldn't wear a wedding dress. Wear what you please. Have as many vow renewals and parties as you want. Just don't call them "weddings". Calling a party a "wedding" implies that your guests are actually going to watch you get married. That's not what's going to happen b/c you're already married. It's not a technicality. It's a lie.

Bottom line - it's your choice to have the elopement wedding. Nobody is forcing you to do that. All choices have consequences. One consequence of the elopement is that your December party will no longer be a "wedding" and you will not be a "bride". The party can be as wedding-like as you want, but it's not a wedding. If you want it to be a wedding, then don't elope. Simple choice.

My husband and I eloped and we are renewing our vows in March. I don't regret the decision at all , but I probably would regret never having a wedding cremony with our family and friends.

In my opinion, the ceremony in December will be your wedding and you can plan it as such.

We had talked about doing this before. I don't think there is anything wrong with eloping and have a wedding ceremony later with our friends and family. My fiancés brother is the pastor for our wedding. We talked to him about it. The only thing was that he asked us if he could explain that we would be already married and the whole situation. Other than that it's really not a big deal. I'm not sure why other people seem to make it one...

I totally agree with yardiegirl... I have read soooo many responses of woman saying its is wrong to have two ceremonies. It is YOUR choice. Do it the way that you want, it is your business.

Besides everyone you invite will love the party!

Wow, Heather! This is soooo old! lol! I only saw it because my email alerted me! We ended up getting married on December 21st at Disney World with 9 guests! We had planned to have an at-home reception, but none of my family seemed to care either way, so we decided not to waste money on it. Overall it was perfect, though there was some crazy in-law drama! I'm glad we didn't elope, but I definitely think everyone should be able to make their own choice.

I know this blog is super old, but I am having the same dilema! I just want a very small ceremony (actually in disney world) but my family is insisting on having a big reception. Both of our families are big, so family alone we have 50 guests.

My fiance and I don't care about the wedding, we just want to get married and have thought about eloping and then having the wedding reception later on. Any advice on this?

I know it is my wedding, but I don't want to make anyone mad.

Me and my fiancé are eloping in two months. We called our families and got their approval. We are still having a wedding in June 2016. I'm still calling it a WEDDING. Not a wedding celebration. We will have two separate vows and the same officiant for both. He's also our premarital counselor. I'll be married for a year before I get the wedding I want. We didn't want to live together unmarried. We had before due to unforseen circumstances, but moved in latet with roommates. Now, we feel more than ready to be married. I didn't want to marry him until he asked my father and proposed. Also, we are having our wedding in another state where we're both not from as a middle ground location for our families. That's why it's taking so long before the wedding. But at the end of the day, do what works for you.

Everyone's responses were so helpful and sound like eloping worked out for everyone.

I am in a bit of a pickle with this subject, upon engagement I asked my fiancé if we should elope. Just knowing that the family drama may ruin the wedding day for us, not so much about money (we had a generous budget from my father to help). He said no, he knew I've always wanted to do the big wedding thing and that we would get through it, that was in August, since then the wedding planning process has been miserable with my parents sadly. I feel as if the stress is not manageable for them and causing so much anxiety that its affecting their quality of life and honestly not worth it. My fiancé and I have been together for over 4 years now, just bought a condo and are apart for half the year due to his job, so we would just like to be together on our wedding day, we value all the time we are able to spend together. We already have put money down for the venue and photographer and I bought my dress, but I am thinking it won't work and to just do something small, the two of us and pay back the deposits to my father.

Curious if anyone has opted for an elopement mid wedding plans and if anyone wants to share their story or advice?

OK, this is seriously bothering me. I'm not wanting to sound rude, but what is wrong with some of you people on the internet?

My husband and I are Muslim. We are Shia. In our religion he can look at me and say we are married and if I say yes, then boom! Done. No witnesses. However, we then had to go to the stupid courthouse and file papers because he was deploying to Afghanistan in a week. So we did that and the Christian preacher in the back "married" us even though we were already married.

THEN, my hubby, while in Afghanistan, gets butthurt because he wants a white wedding and cake. I felt the same way slightly. We are American, and many of our friends we like, wtf we want a wedding. Because we don't use social media, people don't know we are married really except family. That's ok. In Iraq, you actually have to sign a shit ton of paperwork and get married with an Imam or administrator before they let you go and plan a wedding.

So, my hubby flies in from deployment and sews me a beautiful white wedding dress and tried to give me wedding fever. It stuck, and we made invitations and are now having a wedding. We are not calling it a vow renewal, and no one has said we are "offensive" or "wrong." There is no dating in Islam, so technically we had an arranged marriage. We had seen each other twice before we were islamically married and had known of each other's existence for two and a half weeks. My husband claims his mom talked about me for several months before that, but he was probably eating chips and playing xbox so I don't give him much credit.

Yes, there is a culture explosion here. There is the Islamic way of marriage because there is not dating, then we got married on paper because he was deploying, and now we are FINALLY having a ceremony. Are we wrong? No. This is how it is actually done in MANY countries, not just the Middle East. Our three different dates of marriage? One we celebrate, one we forget because the legal papers never counted, and one we are about to perform our ceremony. In Iraq, they count the day of signing the marriage contract in the name of Islam as the wedding day, and about 90% of couple's weddings are done on a separate day because the paperwork takes so long. The other 10% manage to wake up at 4 am and do their paperwork then exhausted go have their ceremony. Often times these events happen months apart. My grandmother was married in Erbil, Iraq when she was FOUR months pregnant, and his mother was THREE months pregnant. They were technically "married" but had to delay the ceremony because of war, money, ect. It was still a wedding.

This whole "it's not a real wedding" is an American invention. I never felt guilty about it one bit or even knew some people thought what we were doing was "wrong" until I was trolling the internet. I know I'm ranting, but this is ridiculous. Women, support your fellow women. The courthouse marriages is a new invention. Your wedding day is the day you get a nice dress and get to have fun. A marriage ceremony might have already happened, for whatever reason it's NO ONE's business, but your wedding ceremony is still so important. In fact, in Islam if you get married it is required to then later have a wedding, a WEDDING not vow renewal, to show the people you are taken.

By the way, if it was up to me, we would have our wedding ceremony on the same day we signed our marriage contract, but he is now serving the US Army in IRAQ and won't be home until May, so this is how we are doing it. Three wonderful dates and more to love. Completely the cultural norm in our part of the world. Ladies, don't ever let someone tell you how to live and run your life, not in this century.

Just to make myself clear, if the court house marriage was your thing and that's all you wanted, that is also OK. What is not ok is telling already insecure women that a wedding ceremony after an elopement or being forced to get married for immigration/insurance/deployment is NOT ok. We live in a modern world and things do not happen the way they did in the 1800's and that is more than ok.

Although I had an arranged marriage and that's an antique concept, we are still a modern family who is loving and accepting. There is nothing wrong except bringing people down.

I agree with Dana. I'm in a situation where we are uncertain whether or not to share the day we eloped with guests. Did anyone share their first date with guests? Did you annoucne at the wedding ceremony?

My fiance and I are going to get legally married then have a wedding (ceremony and reception later). I feel like one persons' response in particular was harsh because she centered it on her own beliefs-but just because it's your belief doesn't mean it's wrong for someone else. I'm Chinese, and we believe in getting married on a certain day (based on the birthdays of the bride and groom)-it's superstitious, but important to my parents. So my fiancé and I are doing an elopement to get that aspect in (to be married at the designated date/time). We needed more time to plan the actual wedding (to save up some money) so that's what we're doing. If anyone thinks it's "wrong" they don't have to come.