One Ceremony or Two??

As you said the choice is up to you guys. I don't see anything wrong with getting married now and doing the big celebration later. So many people are doing this. The most important thing is that you and FH both agree on how to move forward.

We just had a small ceremony in June on our original date and I am so glad we did it that way. We are still having another ceremony and our reception next year with everyone. But I am so happy that we did it, we had a long engagement so I was so ready to be married! 🙂

I would do your plan of making it legal and then do g the whole thing next year. My SIL is actually doing this and everyone is fine with it. I understand not wanting to wait a whole extra year.

We are making it legal on July 21st, but still doing the full ceremony with handwritten vowels in May. We still want the excitement of walking down the aisle and making our promises to each other in front of our loved ones.

So we are doing a small backyard ceremony only. On our original date and doing the whole big wedding the following year. We just want to make it legal already and need to for insurance, I don’t see anything wrong with legal now party later. We have also been together 8 and engaged 2 so I get it!

I was in the same position. We've also been engaged for two years (together for 5) and I'm just ready to be married. We are getting married no matter what on July 18 and pushing our big wedding out to next August 2021. That way we hopefully can invite everyone we wanted to originally invite. There's nothing wrong with doing both and I completely understand not wanting to wait a whole year.

After much agonizing, we are now doing a very small ceremony on our original date (September 26) with only immediate family, then doing a large reception next spring or summer (with original guest list). Our plan right now is to hire a videographer for the ceremony and then play it at the reception.

I'm still coming to terms with all of this, as we really didn't expect to have to change our plans. Our state is still doing well and our wedding is all outdoors, but we started to hear from out of town people they weren't comfortable coming. We'd rather celebrate with everyone when it's safer to do so.

I'm in MA but I lived in CA for a while and we have similar names, so I'm extra interested in this question.
We're having a small ceremony on our original date and we postponed the big celebration to next year. There are a few people who are offended about not being included this year, but it's really not about them. If you get married in your original date, would you be able to include everyone who you feel absolutely needs to be there? (We're including parents, siblings, grandparents.) If your family can't/won't fly out to be there, would you be okay Zooming/Skyping/Google Hangouts-ing the ceremony to them? Or would you be fine getting married without them?
If you think you'll be able to include everyone you need to have with you (physically or virtually) or you don't need anyone other than your fiancè and an officiant with you, there's no reason to wait another year.
P.S. I was also going to say you could get married in MA on your og date but in a much smaller way than you planned, but it's kind of ridiculously hard to get a marriage license right now, at least in the Boston area, so that might not be realistic.