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I would "confess" and have your "wedding" as a vow renewal.
I haven't known anyone to be in a situation like this before. Its a shame you guys eloped for your family but then were never able to tell them. I can imagine how stressful that is. If I were in this situation. I would do what you mentioned. I'd do a ceremony for your closest family and a reception afterward for the others. The reason I'd keep this a secret and continue on with the wedding is not because of how this was taking a toll on me, but because I would want to avoid hurting the people I cared about. As I see it, I'd rather it be me feeling awful than my family. You don't want to take this experience away from your parents or close family/friends. This is something they've been wanting too.
Good luck with your decision.
Sort of went through it but ended up telling family we were going to get married before the wedding (even tho we had already been married 6 months). We got married in June and didn't bring the idea up of having a civil ceremony until December. So everyone thinks we only got married this past December and we are planning our wedding for November. I'm half and half, part of me feels good about being open and honest about it and not be deceitful but the other part wanted to not say anything because I didn't want it to take away from the actual wedding day. Either way the cats out of the bag and everyone is so thrilled and happy for us and can't wait for our "vow renewal". So in short you should tell your family because I know before my hubby told he was like you, moody and cranky because he hated keeping it secret so I finally said "OK let's tell, it's the right thing to do in the end."
well - sorta not really in your situation...DH and I got married last april - our wedding is in June. we HAD to get married last year because he has two steel rods in his back (scoliosis) and HAD to have pretty much a life-saving back surgery. He had no insurance and I have fabulous insurance. So we had a small ceremony on the back deck of our house - which included my mom and dad, our best friends (who is my MOH and her husband) and then one of our retired ministers who is one of my mom's best friends. She officiated the ceremony.
Asides from them - the ONLY other person i have told is my boss at work (as she did this herself and it was her opinion I asked for before taking the leap)...
Now - we did eventually tell his mom because she and his bro/sis-in-law came out for the surgery and his mom was worried since he didn't have insurance so I told her. She hasn't told ANYONE else though, and I know she hasn't cuz no one has said anything - and his family would totally have said something, if the knew! lol
so yeah - we are married - and asides 8 people total (again, my parents, MOH/her husband, one officiant, his mom, and our officiant that will be doing our wedding in june) - nobody else knows. (yeah that seems like a lot, lol - but not when we're inviting over 150 people to the wedding!)
so anywhoo. that's our story. now I DO totally get your feelings of guilt over not telling anyone. it's very hard to keep up the "fiance" charade when you ARE legally married.
Honestly - and I'm saying this mainly because you've kept it a secret for so long already and it sounds as if your family would be ticked off if they found out differently. The wedding is what - 2.5 months away - don't tell anyone. After the wedding is said and done with and you feel it necessary to tell people then by all means do so. But also explain to them the reasoning behind why you did it. But I think it would cause even MORE stress if you told everyone right before the wedding. Wedding planning is stressful enough as it is - believe me, I know. I can't tell you how many times a day - as excited as I am for the wedding - that I say to myself "i can't WAIT for this wedding to be over with!!!!!" lol.
I agree with the other poster - look at the vows you will be saying in front of everyone more as a "re-newal". I'm looking at it that way as well as "wow - I FINALLY get to publicly tell everyone how much we love each other and are committing to each other for life. I FINALLY get to call him my "husband" in public. I FINALLY get to legally change my name. It's more of a "coming out" sorta thing - lol!
but seriously. I understand your guilt. I do. I have family members that would probably refuse to come if they knew. BUT I'm also the kind that - well we did it for a very specific life-saving reason and if they do find out and have an issue with it - then that's THEIR issue. not mine.
take a nice long hot bath and try to de-stress and meditate as much as you can. you know the reason why you got married before the wedding day. it was your decision and you made it for all the right reasons. there's NOTHING wrong in not telling people. you're NOT being selfish for wanting to share the love of you and your husband with everyone.
also - something we are asking our officiant to say - I found this on a bride's projectwedding site - her ceremony started out like this:
"Good Afternoon! We are gathered here today, not to witness the beginning of what will be, but rather what already is and to give recognition to the worth and beauty of love, and to add our blessing, encouragement, and life long support to the words which will unite groom and bride in holy matrimony."
I love the "not to witness the beginning of what will be, but rather what already is". We will know what that means but no one else will!
What is the proper way to go about telling everyone we are married if that is what we decide to do? If we decide that, should we just not have a wedding or reception at all? At this point I am almost ready to say "screw it" because of all the stress of planning the whole thing. What is the etiquette for that then, should I offer to pay for my bridesmaids dresses? I think the answer is yes.
@Booboo10 - if you want the wedding, have the wedding. If you don't want to go through the "charade" of a ceremony, or calling it a vow renewal, just tell your family that you didn't want to "live in sin" (for lack of a better term) so you and your husband eloped, and instead of getting married on June 5, you will be having a reception to celebrate the marriage with your family and friends. Think of it like you had a destination wedding instead of eloping. Then read Miss Nachos posts - her reception still sounds like a wedding, even though its after the actual ceremony.
We eloped last May and didn't tell anyone. Still haven't. We're having a big wedding in May. I feel guilty because not even my mom knows and it would kill her.
That said, everyone knows that I've always wanted to elope, so to ease our guilt we are telling people that we will already be legally wed by our wedding day and that this is just our religious ceremony - I converted to Judaism since we eloped so this is still a Jewish wedding for us and we consider it just that, our Jewish wedding, not a vow renewal. So we told them we will already be married and that we want to keep the date just for us and they are all cool with it and think it's fine (we just left out that it happened 9 months ago!).
At the end of the day, they are your family, they love you and they will be happy for you no matter what.
We got married last month and our wedding is going to take place in August. Other than our pastor & witnesses, a HR person or two, and his brother and SIL (we got outed on vacation, long story), no one knows and that is how we plan on keeping it. Because a (little) part of us getting married was due to stress caused by family, I can't say that I feel as guilty as you. But I do feel for you and the stress it is causing. I'd echo what a pp said- you did what you did for good reasons, it was a decision not entered into lightly, and I hope you are able to embrace it and focus on the joyful aspects of the decision to marry.
While it will be billed as a wedding, we're personally viewing it as a vow renewal and looking at it as an opportunity to make that commitment in front of others. We've put together a ceremony that, if read or listened to closely, you might pick up on it was a vow renewal, so you could try that approach. If you decide to go with just a reception, why not update the invite into an announcement of your marriage and then invite people to a reception? I'm guessing it would still be an announcement people would want to celebrate with you. I haven't spent any time wedding planning recently, but I've also started referring to it as our dinner party.
I do understand you when you say you are at the "screw it" point, because that is where I am at with the wedding. Shortly after we got married, it really hit me how meaningful the event was without all the hoopla and expense. Like you, I would call the whole thing off, but in my situation, it would only bring more negativite comments, and that, to me, is worse emotionally than just going through with it. If I did call it off, I was going to repay the cost of the dresses. It would be less than finishing up paying for the party we never threw. All the other deposits would just go away, and really, that would be ok with me. Good luck with whatever you decide.
I know this isn't a very popular opinion here, but it is probably the one most of your guests will have. It is flat out wrong to hide that fact that you are already married just so that you can have your big traditional wedding. You already had a wedding, you decided to get married sooner and just elope. So in my opinion when you made that decision you decided that getting married right then was more important than waiting so that you could have a big traditional wedding.
I would say it's okay to have a party celebrating your marriage. But I would skip the ceremony, vows, etc.
I think you should be honest. People will still want to celebrate with you. I would happily attend a celebration of someone's marriage. I don't understand why anyone (not just you original poster) would want to lie to their guests. What is there to be gained besides hurt feelings when people find out, and people always find out.
Personally, I would much prefer to go to a celebration after the fact, then to be duped into attending a fake wedding. A wedding is a legally binding agreement, and is not just a party.
I would also be ticked if someone invited me to a dinner party and I got there and it wasn't a dinner party, but rather their kids piano recital. It's a bait and switch and that to me is always wrong.
@Booboo10: If you don't have a TRADITIONAL WEDDING then you opt out of all the wedding festivities such as showers, bachelorette parties, bridal luncheons, etc. Sorry! That's just how it goes!
I would have the wedding and tell the guests at the wedding. Nothing to hide! Your in love.
I wonder how a vow renewal look like a actual wedding? Tonight it was our worst dayin years. We were told by our pastor that we can't have the actual wedding but only a vow renewal because we were already married legally. It stunned us when we first heard it, and my wife was crying . We wanted a actual wedding ceremony instead of a vow renewal. Not only that we can't use the sentry for our wedding, we can't even invite our guest as a actual wedding ceremony. We were told to send out invitation with the title as vow renewal. I mean, is it really no other ways we can have an actual ceremony?
@Jordan002: Unfortunately, you already had your ceremony, even if it wasn't the BWW that you envisioned.
The pastor has certain responsibilities to the state in order to be able to legally conduct marriage ceremonies, and I can see why he wouldn't be willing to essentially lie. He by law cannot marry a couple who is already married. It is a legally binding agreement between the state and the couple.
You can have any kind of ceremony (vow renewal, church blessing, commitment ceremony) that is not a marriage ceremony.
@andielovesj: Ditto. Jordan, I'm sorry you're disappointed that choosing to get married in private has consequences you did not foresee. But married is married whether you had all the pageantry of the white dress, bridesmaids, bouquets, etc. or not. You cannot get married twice unless you divorce in between. If you're having another ceremony, "vow renewal" is accurate. "Wedding ceremony" is not.
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Hello,
I need some help deciding what I should do (etiquette wise) regarding a wedding situation that I am in. First, let me tell the story... My fiance and myself got engaged last May. We had been living with his parents for quite some time (approx. 2 and a half years), but because of financial reasons had not been able to move out and rent or buy a place of our own. I became aware of a vacant house on a piece of property that my Grandparents owned that had not been lived in for close to 3 years, so I made a deal with my grandfather to live in this house free of rent up until the wedding in June. The only problem with this situation was the fact that my whole family is very traditional Christian and does not believe in people living together before they are officially married. So the original plan was to have my fiance try to stay there without detection. We both did not like sneaking around, and thought it would be less stressful if we got married ahead of time, and thought "What the heck, we will just get married now and have the big wedding bash later on." So we went up to Reno (by ourselves) and got married in September. We were originally going to tell my family about it because of the living situation, but after awhile of not telling anyone, we thought it might hurt our chances of having the big wedding if word got out that we were already married. As of right now, I have told no-one that we are married, and my husband has told only his brother and one of his best men (and each were told not to tell anyone). Everything has been set up for the wedding in June and a bridal shower in April- all of the deposits paid, bridesmaids dresses bought, and decorations bought.
Here is my dilema/ problem:
1.) I feel absolutely terrible about lying to everyone- physically (I can't sleep, getting sick all of the time), and mentally (having anxiety issues, and not myself- very cranky, and mean)
2.) I don't know what we should do! I want a big wedding, because every girl wants a big wedding, with the dressing up like a princess, the pictures, gifts, and all of our friends and family coming together. But at the same time, I don't want to get up in front of everyone we know and pretend to get married again, plus I hate the obvious toll on my health right now. My husband stands by me in whatever I decide, but I can't make the decision- it is just too much! I have thought about having a intimate ceremony (with just close family) at a different location before the reception. And just inviting everyone else to the reception later on.
Has anyone had a similar situation happen to them? One of the reasons why we got married earlier was so that it would be less stressful to plan the big wedding, but it has actually turned out to be more stressful (I think) then it would have been if we had just waited. Any advice would be great