Married 2 Times

My coworker did this last year where they had a courthouse wedding and I don’t think at that one they said personal vows or anything. Then they later had an intimate elopement ceremony. And then even later on they had a wedding celebration reception only

Hi Heavenly, we are doing exactly this! Our courthouse ceremony was last winter 2019, lasted literally a few minutes and super technical legal verbiage read from some NY judge (just us and my parents). We had our religious wedding scheduled this year but then had to postpone to 2021 due to covid. The plan is to have a catholic ceremony at a church, followed by an Islamic ceremony at our reception venue in front of all our friends and family. Many of whom will be travelling internationally. I believe what makes the second wedding special is the exchanging of meaningful vows, the religious blessings and the fact that my husbands family will be in attendance from Morocco and Europe. I think working in some special language and having a larger audience and people in attendance to participate is what makes the second weeding its own unique stand alone ceremony.


Everyone’s situation is different and it worked better for us this way. Most of the people who had anything negative to say were onlookers outside my group of friends and family. I do not value or care about their opinions because these folks mean nothing to me. All my guests cannot wait and couldn’t be happier to celebrate with us. (I’m preempting any further negative comments that may come your way). Good luck planning!

Sort of! We had a small ceremony where my brother-in-law married us with just immediate family present. We're having a big ceremony/reception in October (hopefully!). Our original intention was to have the first ceremony filmed and show the video at the October ceremony. Unfortunately, you can't hardly hear us on the video, so what we're looking at doing now is a sand unity ceremony and then reciting our vows to each other in the October ceremony. We will also be having everyone walk up the aisle and doing all of the traditional wedding thing we originally planned then.

You may already be married, but you're still the woman of the day! You get to be a bride that day however you want that to look.

Hi there,

I think this is a beautiful idea! I would absolutely encourage you to have a small ceremony now with a larger reception next year. I love the idea of showcasing photos from your smaller ceremony, at your larger reception. I think your guests will love this!

I'm excited to hear what you decide.

Sending lots of love your way!

We did this, we got married at a park with an officiant we found on facebook in 2018. And in April 2019 we got married through the catholic church and had a big reception :-) It was so nice to be able to legally already be married do the name changes etc, and then plan and save later on and invite family and friends. It made it a lot less stressful, and it didnt take away at all since we had two different style weddings we got to do it twice 1 with secular vows and the 2nd time with the catholic celebration.

I haven't done this but I've heard this is the norm pretty much everywhere but the US.