help - needing to get married on short notice

Looking for some serious advice. My boyfriend (and yes, I say boyfriend...hear me out), my boyfriend and I have been dating for over 5 years now. We were going to start planning a wedding once I was finished with school, however, I recently got accepted into a very rigorous 4 year doctorate program so the wedding idea was sidelined until i was due to graduate and have my own job. My boyfriend was originally here on a student visa, he is from the UK. He applied for a renewal of his Visa over the summer but we just found out he didn't get selected (visa selection is a lottery process- the immigration process is really dumb). His Visa is now expired and his work authorization runs out in June. He will have to go back to the UK and there are a bunch of rules about how long he has to stay there before he comes back etc...it's just a huge mess. So we have decided to get married and apply for a green card. Only issue is that we would have to do this by the end of March at the latest. That is NOT enough time to plan a wedding, it's barely enough time to get the paperwork together. This has all happened so quickly that the engagement ring still hasn't arrived, technically he hasn't formally proposed yet. Everything is happening out of order, which is ok, but my mom is worried about how we will explain this to people. We think we will have a civil ceremony followed by a small marriage celebration in March, then immediately begin planning a religious ceremony for about a year and a half later. We really want to have a ceremony with all of our family and friends present but that is not in the cards for March due to this crappy situation. My original thought was that a civil ceremony is a marriage, but not a wedding, since a wedding is a religious affair. However, I am concerned that might not be the "appropriate" way to go about this. Maybe planning a renewal of vows in a year would be a better option? We wanted to still have "bridesmaids and groomsmen" standing up there with us even if we don't call them that (since we'd already be married). And we'd like to do the rehearsal ceremony the night before (it could just be a renewal of vowls reheral instead of a wedding rehearsal). And a special dance at the reception with my father and with my husband. It wouldn't be a first dance, but I still feel like it is okay to have a special dance on your special day with your loved ones. We want this to have similar aspects of a traditional wedding without stepping on any etiquite toes. As far as I know there is not specific way to have a renewal ceremony, so I don't see a problem with having it mimic the aspects of a traditional wedding as long as the church is on board with the verbage of the ceremony. Our family and friends are all clued in on everything and there are no secrets. We have the full support of everyone involved, we would just like some advice since it seems no one else has been in this situation before!


Anither thought: if we were able to pull if a very small chapel wedding followed by a small gathering afterwords to celebrate, would it be appropriate to do a registry at that time? Or wait till the renewal? No one can agree on when to do a registry. It just seems wrong to have one if we aren't having a wedding where everyone is invited (civil ceremony). But at the same time, some people say it's tacky to have one for a renewal. This is a very strange place to be in and traditional rules are all out the window, just looking for some sort of guidance! Please help!

--stressed out soon to be bride