Married on paper before ceremony

I never heard of a DW where the bride and groom actually gets married that day. It's either before they leave the USA or when they get back. All of your guest will be well aware that's not your legal ceremony. I don't see a reason to make a big announcement. This is not the same as getting married beforehand and then having a vow renewal.

I'm no sure how court house weddings work, but if you are just signing paperwork, you don't really make vows at that time right? Vows are for more of the social, public part of the wedding. I would have no problem if you made your life a million times easier by signing the papers a week before the wedding and then I flew to a DW to witness your actual vows. That to me, would still be your wedding. I might be totally wrong about the vows at the courthouse thing, but still to me, this wouldn't be simply a destination vow renewal.

I work at the courthouse and I've seen a couple legal weddings since starting here for those who have DWs. My favorite couple they dressed up but not the whole white dress and tux. She wore a beautiful green dress with a matching hat. He wore a shirt and tie. It looked so perfect. It certainly made for great pictures. I believe their actual ceremony was in China where the bride was from.

To clarify: the court "ceremony" is literally just for the signing of the papers no meaning behind it whatsoever other than for legal purposes it is literally 5 days before our actual wedding in Mexico because we are flying out there several days ahead of time to prepare and set up. Courts are not open on the weekends otherwise I would push it back closer to the day we leave. Only my parents and his parents will be in attendance because in nJ you need 2 witnesses. We aren't even exchanging rings at the court not do I believe there is any actual vows so it will not be a vow renewal.

We are already legally married, the person we wanted to marry us hasn't married anyone in a while so they aren't ordained, we were totally okay with that so we got legally married last week but no one knows except a few close people, just figured it would confuse people. Well i'm glad we did because DH originally wanted a City Hall wedding and now he's glad we are having an actual wedding/reception it was so not romantic, it was super fast and kinda awkward. I just wore a floral dress and we took a pic with our daughter, we exchanged rings but it still didn't feel real haha.

I mean "You" in the cosmic sense, not specifically referring to anyone, sorry about that.

But seriously; how many people have had ANYONE at their wedding ask to see the license or watch the signing before they could be happy about it? Or call the couple to make sure that was going to be done on the day? In NJ, the license isn't even signed by the couple on the day of the wedding, no matter where the wedding is. It's signed at the courthouse when you file for the license and pick it up.

Beach, you do have to say some kind of vow, as far as I know (in NJ).

We did the legal bit about a month before our wedding (here they only offer courthouse weddings twice a month and we didn't want to risk getting down to the wire and something going wrong). We did it because here your only options for an officiant are a religious official or a judge. So if you aren't religious (we aren't) you really only have the option of a courthouse which means you can only bring 2 people. This didn't seem right to us. We couldn't have even had both of our parents there, let alone the rest of our family or our closest friends. So this was the solution that worked for us. We only told my parents. They were the ones helping to plan the wedding. His parents weren't involved so it wasn't a big deal and honestly they are very difficult people who like to find something wrong with everything. They were already upset we weren't getting married in a church and this would have just given them an opening to complain about that again. I don't see anything wrong with not telling people because as far as we were concerned that was essentially signing the papers. We see our wedding as our wedding.

At the courthouse we saw everything from people in literally sweat pants to a full on wedding gown. I can't imagine much of anything could have looked out of place. We did wear nicer clothes than just jeans or something because to us it would have been disrespectful to be so casual. Even though we were having a wedding with friends and family later on, for many of the people there this was their one and only wedding. DH wore nice khaki pants and a button down and I wore a sundress.

It was actually a really fun day. We got to see quite a few weddings waiting for our turn and everyone clapped and was happy for each other. It was awesome to see so many people so happy!