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i don't see a problem, but then again, this is our plan, though not for insurance reasons or anything but simply because the boy is convinced that weddings are not about the couple and wanted to make sure ours was. i already floated the idea to some friends and they thought it was a good one, especially the ones who were overwhelmed by their own parents while planning their weddings. so obviously i'm biased but i say go ahead and do it. but if you feel a little unsure, you can always consider the second ceremony as a kind of renewing of vows instead of a second wedding.
true - i'm a little worried that family will somehow find out and get offended, or something... but thinking of it as renewing vows is a good way to look at it. :D thanks, tea.
I understand the motivations you have for considering this option, but here's my feeling:
Getting married for "business" purposes takes the magic out. By the time your wedding rolls around you'll be so used to considering eachother husband and wife (even if other people in your life aren't) that it seems it might be a bit less fantastic as it could be.
We recently considered getting married in Mexico and had decided to do the "legal" wedding after the "mexican" wedding, so that the first time we said the words "I do" would be in the magical place we had chosen, in front of all our family and friends, and we could properly celebrate after.
We ended up deciding against Mexico for other reasons, but I still believe that sentiment.
Good luck in whatever decision you make!
I don't actually see anything wrong with it, although I think you have to consider that people will find out. Someone in the financial aid office will talk to someone else, someone in benefits will talk to someone else, your doctor or dentist or nurse practitioner will notice the benefits change, and eventually it gets around. We are not getting married until July, but my home and auto insurance paperwork already comes in my "new name," because somebody at SafeCo decided to be helpful when I sent in the appraisal for my e-ring, which had FI's name on it as well. Which led to my mailman coming up to the door to knock and congratulate me... Or at least after the fact (come September) somebody is talking about having been to your wedding last month, and somebody else says "Oh no, they've been married since April!"
I do have a friend who was actually married for almost two months before her wedding, although under rather different circumstances. They had made all their plans and sent out invitations and her mother, who was dying of cancer, got suddenly much worse. They thought it was important to say their vows before her mom, so they got the pastor to come marry them in the hospice. Nobody but family actually knew until the wedding - they didn't even tell the bridal party. And during the wedding (since it was the same pastor) he made a reference to the prior ceremony. There was much confusion, but I think that everybody understood.
I think there are a number of practical reasons why having a small legal wedding prior to the big celebration/reception is a good idea. However, if it would require lying to or hiding from your family in order to do it, I would feel very sad about it and make sure that my reasons were very compelling rather than just convenience. It doesn't seem as though it would be a very good start to a marriage to have the original ceremony be somewhat dishonest, or to consider it to be no-big-deal because your big party for everyone else is later. Make sure that you honor each other and the ones you love through your decisions, but if that can be done with the legal part and the celebration part a few months away, I don't see a problem
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I wouldn't worry about it, bettina =) Go for it, and if you're discreet, no one will mind. We are planning to do the same thing about a month before the wedding, just to get around the 'you must have a licensed officiant marry you' thing. I'm pretty sure that a courthouse marriage can be very business-like, and won't get mixed up with the magic of your 'real' wedding. We plan on just going in jeans and t-shirts! I also think that getting married beforehand might take some of the pressure off the wedding day, but we'll see how that pans out =)
If you're comfortable with it, go for it. Every extra dollar saved counts, especially during wedding planning. If you are not doing any of the "official" married things or officially functioning as husband & wife until after the wedding, I think it would still feel pretty awesome walking down the aisle during the real wedding.
I think it would be more deceiving if you were planning on secretly living as husband and wife, then planning a wedding years from now, but that's not the case here.
Have you considered how this is going to work operationally? If you legally get married first, then a marriage certificate would be filed at that time. I think you'd have to inform your officiant for the real wedding about this so that he doesn'task where the marriage license is so he can sign and file it, which might make things a little complicated!
Hmm. That is tricky. I second SoCalBeachGirl's suggestion that you discuss it with your officiant, to get his/her views on performing a wedding ceremony for people who are already married.
You might also keep in mind that, in many places, the newspaper runs the names of all the people who obtain marriage licenses in a given week.
bettina-
I'm actually doing exactly what you're planning, although my motivations for doing so are slightly different. We live in San Francisco while the wedding will be in LA and we already had our hands full with driving back and forth looking for cake, photographer, and venues. So we told our parents that we'd take care of getting our marriage legally "done" a week before the wedding. They were totally fine with that. Plus, now I am totally ecstatic that we will have this as "our own thing" as I quickly found out that my mom turned into momzilla with the planning process. We will have the BMs and GMs who are in NorCal with us attend the civil ceremony and then going out to have a nice dinner afterwards :)
So I totally support your idea, no matter what the intentions are. Do what feels best to you and don't stress out!
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our ceremony date is not really an option - we have made deposits for our date almost a year in advance to secure it (and before we knew what our plans were for this period of time, unfortunately), so we'd have to re-plan everything and possibly lose deposits to change the date.
as for the officiant, my fiance's uncle may be marrying us, or, if not, then another friend or relative. we won't be hiring an "officiant" (because the only ones available were over 500 dollars, which we do not want to pay for a 15 minute ceremony).
thanks for the feedback!
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I've had two friends who decided to get married at the courthouse first. One because it was their most auspicious day for their wedding (they are Chinese) and the other was too busy with dental school at the time that she couldn't plan it. Both were upfront and straightforward about their nuptials with friends and families. Their immediate family was in attendance at their civil ceremonies. It was a little strange to think about it AT FIRST but we all thought it was their perogative. At their weddings, they were both so excited that I don't think it really mattered that legally they were already married. It was a day of happiness that they shared with their families and friends. Frankly, they were both beautiful days to the guests as well and I was grateful and appreciative that they would allow me to be a part of it. I would encourage you to just be frank about the situation.
Hi there,
I'm actually doing this exact same thing, though for different reasons. We're having a church ceremony the Sunday before our big Saturday wedding (so one week before). My fiance's family is pretty religious and freaked out at the thought of us not getting married in a church. After dealing with very stressful arguments with them, we decided to do two ceremonies. So we'll be legally married at the small church ceremony the week before our big "real" wedding...Only parents, grandparents, and our siblings will attend, and we'll go to dinner afterwards. Then the following Saturday we will have our actual wedding. I know it's confusing, but to make things easier, our marriage license will be for the church wedding.
Our big wedding will be at a winery, with our best friend who introduced us to each other as our officiant. The minister who is conducting our small church ceremony will also be our "co-officiant" at the winery wedding.
The ceremony at our big wedding is really the ceremony that means the most to us, and so we are going to count that day as our anniversary.
I have to say, it definitely makes me feel better that other brides consider this!!
My FI and I did this. We will have been legally married for two years (almost to the day) by the time we have our formal ceremony and reception. I do not regret my decision to marry him early, but I can say that there have been some serious draw backs.
Let me first explain our reasoning. My FI had to unexpectedly deploy to Iraq for a year long tour. We had already survived a very rough deployment to Iraq while we were dating, and recognized the advantages of getting married before he deployed again. This was the brunt of our decision, though there were financial considerations as well. Our immediate families know, my MOH knows, and, well, the entire military knows. We have not told anyone else, have not held ourselves out as husband and wife except when we needed to disclose it for insurance and other purposes. We still do not live together because the military still owns him and I am finishing up grad school in a different state.
Now, keeping this a secret has been very difficult on both of us. I have 6 bridesmaids, and four of them do not know. Each day I feel worse and worse that I haven't told them I am already married. I often find myself in situations where I have to act evasive (what? you're not signing a pre-nup? that's crazy. I can't tell them we didn't have time to worry about a pre-nup before we got married).
My FI's parents were out of the country when we got legally married, and therefore, we had to tell my own parents that it would not be fair to allow them to come. My mother holds a grudge about this and a year and a half later it came to a boil and we almost had to completely rearrange our wedding plans (since my parents are paying for the brunt of it).
We have not yet decided whether we will tell people at the wedding that we are legally married, but we are leaning against it. If my own mother still does not understand our reasoning, I don't know how we can expect a room full of 200 people to understand and it will take the focus off of the fact that we finally get to begin our lives together and place it on a legal formality. However, there are enough people that know we're already married that will be drinking alcohol that evening, and we recognize that we may have to tell people anyways.
On to some of the advantages. It really does take some of the pressure and anxiety off of planning a wedding. While planning the big event is still stressful, neither one of us have to worry about cold feet and we can often take solace in the fact that this is just a big party in many respects. I am very excited about our wedding, but I don't entirely feel like a true bride at this point (maybe I will after my first dress fitting). We won't feel guilty about using wedding gifts before the wedding since there isn't a chance of one of us changing our mind before the wedding.
On a whole, I feel very dishonest about the whole situation, but we are trapped in it now (it's been well over a year at this point). I do not regret my decision, as it was very, very important to me to have the wife recognition from the military, but my advice to you is to consider how many benefits you will really gain from getting married a couple of months early. Is it really worth the lies you will have to tell to some of your closest friends to have a discount on rent for 4 months and not have to pay your own health insurance? Consider how well you can handle it, because it's harder than it seems.
That being said, I just attended another (military) wedding where the couple had gotten married in August (they needed to be married for the military to assign them to the same base when they relocate). They have held themselves out as husband and wife since then, and just had their big church ceremony now. No one seemed to care, and everyone supported them.
my husband and i got legally married 7 months before our wedding due to immigration issues (i'm from canada, he's american). we kept it discreet and only told our immediate families. we did not consider ourselves to be "married" - just that we'd had the paperwork done a little early ;) The wedding was the wedding I'd always wanted and to me that was the start of our marriage. I do not feel at all dishonest about it all... it makes for a great story when i tell people we eloped before our wedding! seeing peoples' jaws drop in surprise is always fun ;)
i dont think this is a big deal. no one will care. if i was a guest at your wedding, i wouldn't. i would understand your reasoning and your wedding day will still be meaningful b/c all of your family + guests are seeing you walk down the aisle, etc, etc.
As a future military wife (FI is a pilot/Air Force officer), I see no problem with getting legally married prior to your big celebration. We have lots of friends who have done this. One's family has NO idea they were married two years prior to their "real" wedding and another's family knows and accepted it. I completely understand the financial need for doing it sooner.
FI and I were considering it because I will be without good health insurance for nearly two years, but when FMIL caught wind she was not pleased. So we've decided against it. However, I would encourage any and all to DO IT!
Future AF wife here too!
We are going to have a small ceremony with our immediate families first because we have yet to get concrete dates for EAD (Enter Activation Date) and FI's pilot training, and are still unable to set a reception date for a summer reception.
This is also for practical purposes to get me into the system and to get all the paperwork taken care of ahead of time.
We are going to do a sort of vow renewal/ceremony with everyone else when we do the reception. This way we will involve everyone that we wanted to invite originally, and we'll still have a wedding party of sorts.
We're also doing this, but again for different reasons. My fiance is British and I'm American, and for him to legally come live and work in the US we want to apply for a specific type of visa that gives him 90 days to enter the country and marry me. Unfortunately, because all application processing times are different, we have no idea when this will actually be approved--it could be as early as a few months or as long as a year. In any case, whenever he arrives, we'll get married, regardless of whether it is 9 months before the date we want or two weeks before.
We have been upfront and honest with our families and friends about the process from the start and they have been very understanding and supportive. For us, even though we'll be legally married beforehand, our real wedding won't be until the date we've set next year, when we can celebrate with all of our friends and family. I also plan on changing my name only after our 'real' wedding.
I think if it's what works for you, you ought to do it. Personally if someone told me they were doing what you want to do I would not be bothered at all and would happily attend any ceremony I was invited to. Good luck!
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At least I'm not the only one! FI proposed to me on 10/22/07. I really really wanted to get married on our anniversary this year, but since its on a Thursday and not feasible for everyone, we made it 10/24. So we have decided that we will just go to the court house on the 22nd and get married then have our wedding on the 24th. That way we get to be married exactly 2 years after he proposed, and everyone will be able to make it to our wedding. I don't plan on telling people about it, save for maybe 1 or 2 close friends that I have discussed this with.
The way I see it, its your wedding. If the day you pick to have the big party isn't the day you want to get married, then plan your wedding after that date and do the legal thing before hand like we will. I don't see it as dishonest, and as it gets closer, we may change our minds and let people know our secret. but if not, we'll have 2 anniversary dates, and the first will be our little secret :)
If we do this it will be b/c of moving and house issues. Call me old fashioned, but as a mom, I don't want to move in with him until he and I are married.
We have my house issues which will require a 3 month intent to move before I can move, an also a month or so to get things ready so they can show the home on the market (which stinks now). I am doing a lease purchase so this is the main issue right now.
I think doing that might be perfect! My two friends (I call them the encore couple) who just got married did the JOP and are having a larger family wedding on the beach this summer and a private reception. They did that because of medical insurance and because their kids were asking questions (they had been married to each other before they got divorced..kids were wondering when mom and dad would get married since the had started living together!).
I'm glad to read this! My boyfriend is about to start police academy, and it very likely will be in a different state. Because he'll be in a pretty dangerous career, I want to get married so that if something happens, I get power of attorney and spousal benefits. We are semi-engaged at this point, and have a wedding date picked out, but it's not for another three years. We know we want to be married, just not until I finish school, so until we're ready to live as husband and wife I feel like we should be able to reap the benefits and have that security. Especially because, since he'll be making much more than he plans to live off of, he's planning to help pay for my school.. so it's only fair that I get financial aid benefits from being married, too!
@Anonymous:Be honest. There is no need to pretend not to be married or untruthful. It's okay to wed maybe a week or so before a destination wedding but months before is pushing it.
Wedding = the day you get married. I think your invitations need to say that people are celebrating your marriage, or something like that. But to go through the vows and get pronounced 'for the first time' (as they always say it when pronouncing you man and wife) is lying to your guests, which is never a good idea.
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ladies,
my fiance and i are considering going the courthouse wedding route prior to our "actual" wedding. our reasons for doing this are mostly financial: insurance, financial aid for school, decreased fees for apartments, and the timing for all of this makes this option one we are thinking about.
we are having our wedding in august, but are thinking about getting legally married through the court before that, perhaps in april or may. ideally, we would keep this discrete among our families and socially, we would not be known to be married. i would not change my name until after the wedding.
doing this would solve a lot of problems, but it feels a little dishonest. what are your thoughts?