Married Before Wedding After

Any reason why you would not just wait until the wedding to be officially married?

This is called either a vow renewal or a celebration of marriage. The wedding is whenever/wherever you get married. You can absolutely do the party after, just don't call it a wedding, because it isn't.

I'm doing this because I'm having a DW where it would be very complicated to get the marriage to be legally legit in that country. I'm doing a very small, simple Justice of the Peace ceremony two weeks before to make it legal.

MNA's answer makes sense if there's a lot of time in between (months? years?). I'm calling my DW a "wedding" without apology and doing all the things associated with that (walk down the aisle, exchange rings and vows, our own cultural traditions, etc). The ceremony before is just to make it legal and as far as I know, nobody has a problem with it though for some reason some folks on here seem to frown upon it.

Are you talking about the same day? Or why would you get married before your "wedding"? That's what a wedding is for. Otherwise like MNA said its a vow renewal... But honestly, I don't see why people have a party for a vow renewal. If you want a wedding, get married at your wedding. If you don't, get married at a courthouse.

You could do this so many ways. If you're getting married at the courthouse and later in the month want to celebrate you host a reception...no ceremony. If you get married and then 1+ years later want to do a vow renewal and reception then go for it.

IMO you should wait at least 1 year before having a vow renewal ceremony with the whole shabang included, but that's me.

I'm not opposed to what @sandpiper is doing because they won't be legally married in the country of their DW. That would be one of the few exceptions to what I consider the "vow renewal".

We do this all the time; sometimes we do the big wedding, sometimes we do the little one (we don't really have city hall weddings in most of NJ) and sometimes we do both. I have people with visa issues, health issues, insurance issues, mortgage issues...even 'we can't hang out in NJ for four days' issues. None of that sounds very romantic, but they're all reasons they get married down and simple. And while it is their legal date of marriage, most consider their celebration with their friends and family their 'wedding'...in fact, in many foreign countries, you'd do both as a matter of course.

You can call it anything you want, do whatever you want, present it in any way you want. Regardless of what strangers on the internet seem to get so bent about, in the end, it's your wedding.

But tell your parents, okay?

NWR, but Carlyle, I love your dog.

Thanks Celia! He's cuter than me and my FH so he was a good choice for the avatar.

Is he a Dane?

My wedding is in September, but my Fiance and I got legally married in November. I work for a state university, and get a really great benefits package. He wanted to go back to school. It felt silly to throw thousands of dollars in education expenses down the drain if we could legalize things and have him go to school for free, plus get my health insurance coverage.

Only close family and friends know that we did this. We did it on a whim on a Monday afternoon. Our wedding is still very real to us and we are looking forward to celebrating our official marriage in September!

He's a lab retriever...aka pound mutt. He's actually only 50ish pounds.

Sorry to slightly hijack the thread with my dog @Charlene

DH and I also did a very small ceremony about a week ago due to some unforeseen circumstances with health and insurance issues. We are still considering our March wedding to be the real date we will celebrate in the future because we have been planning for two years and we didn't want to throw that away less than six weeks away

My parents did this to satisfy her parents so they could live together (despite the fact that it was their second marriage for both of them). My fiancé and I considered it too for the same reason (his family is absolutely maddening!), but aren't sold. I personally don't understand why it's a big deal, everyone has their circumstances and reasons for doing what they do. Do what's right for you and your fiancé and makes you happy.

It's a wedding. I know of people who marry then have a wedding later for the same reason. I thought about it too when I was exploring DW. Don't worry about what others say about it. It's your wedding

But...it's not a wedding. You're already married, and when you got married, that was your wedding. Saying going to the courthouse isn't a "real" wedding is a little insulting.

If you want to later have a celebration, great, but own your choice that you wanted to get "officially" married first for whatever reason.

We did this as well. It wasn't our plan; our May wedding was planned and mostly paid for when we realized I was facing $7,000 in taxes due in April, and getting married in December could save me $5,500. So we talked it over with our parents, got their approval, and got married at the courthouse. Virtually no one knows about it, because it's not their business. If you want don't want to celebrate with me because I said some scripted vows for 8 seconds at the courthouse, you're probably not someone I want there anyhow.

In our minds, the May wedding is the only wedding and the December wedding was a tax hoop to jump through. It's the only anniversary we'll celebrate, and the only wedding we'll acknowledge. FH/DH and I are happy with our choice, and we love being married in the meantime.

But she's having a wedding ceremony. It'll have all the elements of wedding. Just with the legality taken care of earlier.

@Princess- I don't think anyone is saying that a Courthouse wedding isn't a real wedding. At least, I haven't seen anyone say that and if they did its probably awkward wording.

For my fiancé and I, aside from his family driving me up a wall and making me tempted to elope anyway lolz, we also wanted to keep our original anniversary, which is Oct 17. But we'd still be in grad school at this time, so it wouldn't really be smart to us. So we're thinking about having a Courthouse ceremony to legally keep our anniversary and then continue the wedding plans for December. It doesn't mean we don't consider it "real", of course it's real! My parents' marriage is no less real because they chose to say their vows first in a Courthouse and then later in a more formal wedding ceremony! No matter what it's called it's always a celebration of love, just that sometimes some couples do the Courthouse first for varying different reasons and there isn't anything wrong with that.

In the military community, it's the norm. You get legally married and do the whole thing, ceremony and all, later. Some people just have a reception later. It's really up to you, whatever you want to do.

ME ME ME....I DID I DID. I got married 3/11/15 and I am doing my ceremony and reception 3/12/16 and I'm calling it 'A Celebration of Our Union'.