How long after a courthouse ceremony is a wedding considered a vow renewal?

First, let me say that I'm sorry that getting married is so difficult for you. It must be frustrating to have to jump through all these hoops.

However, you need to tell your guests that the ceremony in Canada is a vow renewal. I would be so pissed to find that I had spent the time and money to travel to Canada and had been lied to about the true nature of the ceremony. And it seems the truth always comes out. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't go, it just means that you took away my ability to make the decision without all the facts. Once you've been married in any ceremony, a subsequent event is always a vow renewal. Whether it's two days or two years.

I hear you on the visa insanity.

Anything after the legal ceremony is a vow renewal. With the craziness of how you are getting married I think it's totally fine to have a renewal with all the bells and whistles of a normal wedding (just be honest with your guests).

Good luck! My husband and I have poured so much stress, anxiety, and money into our visa/green card application. ❤️

Girl, the people who love you won't care about the legalities of you having to be legally married for a while first. I went through the same thing with South Korea and the US being our separate countries. You go ahead and have your wedding whenever you can maker it happen. Go ahead and let the guests know ahead of time, but no matter what you call it, the event is still going to have the same meaning. Our wedding day is this October in the US. Our marriage day was in SK. Ding let anybody rain on your parade. If someone gets pissed about the situation, you should reevaluate your relationship with them.

I don’t think guest would care that you guys are already married. I don’t see how being married at a courthouse will make anyone mad even if they had to travel. Your friends and family love you both and want to see an actual wedding! They are attending your wedding to celebrate you guys spending the rest of your lives together. If you didn’t have any guests attend your courthouse marriage because all it was just for you guys to get the certificate for legal reasons. You guys didn’t celebrate your marriage with friends and family. I wouldn’t call it a vow renewal, I’d call it a wedding.

My friend from college had a sister who had THREE weddings. One in Boston where she was from, one in the UK where her husband was from, and idk about the third... lol. It's totally okay to have beautiful wedding-like ceremony, but it is technical a vow renewal ceremony as you are already married. But that's okay!! For many, it's just as important to make that commitment in front of everyone in a traditional ceremony, and just because it's called a vow renewal ceremony won't make it feel like any less of a wedding, except for a few phrases the officiant can't use because you are already husband and wife.

To me a "vow renewal" is something that you do at the 5 or 10 year mark, maybe even a year. I would call your ceremony a "celebration of marriage." Since it's fairly new and you are still celebrating your wedding. You get one wedding though, and that is when you are legally joined. To imply that the "wedding wedding" is the real wedding is sort of insulting to people who are gettting just as married with a courthouse ceremony.

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I agree. Once you're legally married, that was your wedding. Period.

There may be some people who choose not to attend because it's not actually a wedding. While it might suck, you don't get to make that choice for them- they do. You can't lie to them just to get the outcome you want.

While I totally get that the legalities are frustrating, we don't always get to have everything we want, and if you choose to legally marry prior to your reception, there will be people who don't want to travel for a party.

That's life. You need to do whatever works for you, and your guests get to make the same choice just like they do for attending any other event.

All the best.

My question is - how many people will come to Canada since none of the guests live there. That alone would give me pause on spending a bunch of money on a 'wedding wedding'. Because now it's a destination wedding and often times the expectations change and guests want to be treated very well - open bar, dancing, etc. but if you're going to do that make sure people will come!

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There will be dancing, but open bar is $50/person through our venue. :/ Dinner will be $60/person. Instead of doing open bar, we're going to do an "arrival morning" brunch the day before the wedding and we're doing destination gift bags for each family (per usual for destination weddings).

Just thought about this. Why does the event need an official title? How about: you are invited to celebrate the union of (insert name here)? I've had two friends have weddings after being legally married one was a secret, the other was a non secret (meaning it wasn't widely known information). To this day, the secret one is still a secret. A select number of friends know and that's it. People attended the wedding, had a good time and went home. Who's investigating when the legal stuff happened? Tell them, don't tell them, it's up to you.

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It's pretty obvious based on the ceremony, whether a couple is legally married or not. People would likely be pissed off at being lied to. I think this is terrible advice.

I had a courthouse wedding 9 months before our real wedding (we never called it a vow renewal). Some people knew we were married, probably most, but there were probably some who didn’t know. We didn’t broadcast our courthouse wedding or make a big deal since we were planning a big wedding the next year. My husband is military and this is pretty normal- we have plenty of other friends who also needed to be legally married before deployments or moves but didn’t plan weddings until after.

We had 90% of our invites actually show up to the destination wedding. It wasn’t a big deal to anyone that we were already legally married. And honestly, if someone would’ve made it a big deal that would’ve told me a lot about our friendship and relationship... that’s pretty petty. No one accused us of being deceptive or lying to them... they were just happy to be part of our day.

on my destination wedding day, it was nothing but love, tears, happiness, laughter, and big time fun! The people that love you and care about you are going to support you, show up for you, and they will def want to party with you!

People can get married in the US on a tourist visa, they just can’t then apply to change that to a green card. I’m doing the same thing, getting married at a courthouse and having a wedding a few months later. I’m American and my FH is English. We’re going to be separated between the two dates which sucks. Everyone knows, and no one cares, lol.

View Quoted Comment Sure... two years later most people still don't know they were married prior to the wedding celebration. My parents had a renewal and we're pronounced husband and wife all over again. The words said during the ceremony are just that: words. Typically wedding guests don't witness the signing of the marriage certificate so if your officiant plays along you can do your ceremony whichever way you like.
If someone is "pissed" because they weren't invited to the courthouse, they can always leave. You came to celebrate, so celebrate.

Let’s play the angry semantics game again! It would be nice to tell your guests- but it’s your life and your wedding. It’s your day.

You are not OBLIGATED to share that you bureaucratically got married. I wouldn’t even think to ask this as a guest- because it affects me zero. It is your wedding/marriage/life. If you don’t want to tell people- you don’t have to.

ere come all the hate “you lied to me” people. I’d only be upset if someone lied to me if they were trying to hurt me. Which isn’t their intention.