So I know I’m not the only one on here who is having two weddings. Which was SO great to find out back when I first stumbled upon So You’re EnGAYged! I know that one of the biggest problems about getting our “second” wedding to happen was that we weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea. In a lot of ways, we felt we were betraying our first wedding, and our marriage, by having another wedding – as if it would deem our first one “not good enough”.
We’ve been married for just over a year now. I am Canadian, and Bek is from the US. We met while I was living in the US, but there was a time limit on how long that could last. It was a time limit which I exceeded, actually, so I was persona non grata in the US for a little while (oops!). So we had to make some tough decisions pretty early in our relationship about how we were going to manage to be together, and we moved to Canada in order to figure out how we could make something work.
Bek had proposed a few months earlier, but getting married was in a vague vision of the future for us. Then the option of getting married in order for Bek to immigrate to Canada came up, and suddenly we were thinking about marrying a LOT sooner than we had planned. I should mention that at this point we’d been together all of ten months! But, as sappy as it sounds, we’d known from the moment we met that we had found our other half… so when marriage got dropped on the table so soon we weren’t even fazed – we were exhilarated! Marriage wasn’t the only immigration option, we could have had Bek stay in the country a few other ways, but it brought us face to face with the fact that we just WANTED to be married. We wanted to be together, we wanted it now, and we wanted it for good.
And we thought the timing was perfect: Christmas was a little over a week away, and we were spending it just the two of us because our families were far away. What better way to spend our first Chrismas together than by getting married! We decided that we would get married Christmas Eve, at City Hall in Toronto, and then spend a few days honeymooning in Niagara Falls.
We told our families, who were all supportive even though disappointed that they weren’t going to be there. We went to city hall the same day we decided to get married, got our marriage licence, and booked the City Hall chamber for Christmas Eve. We only had 9 days to “plan” what was going to be the tiniest of weddings. We hunted down our plain silver bands together. I went with the holiday theme and wore red and white, and Bek wore the shirt she wore on our first date. I had a bouquet of white roses and holly, and Bek had a boutonniere to match. And that was it! Our witnesses were two men who approached us to witness for them when we were getting our marriage licence; we witnessed for them so they came back 9 days later to witness for us! And after the vows, the tears, and the ring that we almost couldn’t get on my finger, we hopped in a rental car and took off to spend Christmas in Niagara Falls.
It was short and oh so very, very sweet. It was the happiest moment of my life.
So why have another wedding, right?
The original plan was we would have our short, private wedding and then take time to plan a bigger celebration for all our family and friends. This is what we told everyone when we announced we were getting married on 9 days notice. But after we got married, it just felt weird to think about doing something else. And then time passed, and it seemed like an inconvenience to coordinate people, spend all that money, and use up all that time when we were already married. And we thought people just might not be interested. And we didn’t really have an idea of what this celebration would be. So we dropped it, figured why bother.
But then something didn’t feel right about NOT doing the second one. It was in the plans before the first one happened, so some of the choices for the first one were made with the expectation that a second was going to happen, and that influenced some of the decisions that we (mostly I) had made in planning our City Hall wedding. So after a few frank discussions about our expectations, concerns, and wants, we decided we would do it! We’d have the second wedding, and we’d have it soon! We figured the window of time in which other people would have an interest in celebrating an already-in-progress marriage was rapidly closing.
I struggled at MANY points in the early stages of the planning process about what this second wedding should be. But after first trying to fight with it, remind people that it ISN’T a wedding, correct people when they call it a wedding, and trying to down-play it’s importance… I’m over it! It’s not a wedding because we’re going to be wed - it’s a wedding because it looks like one, plain and simple. So what?!?!? It’s a hell of a lot of fun, so call it what you want. Our quiet little ceremony at City Hall will always be our wedding to us, but we can still enjoy our big ceremony and party with everyone else. And our marriage is my favourite thing EVER, so I think it deserves as many weddings as it wants!
Anyway… anyone else struggled/struggling with those funny mixed feelings over planning two weddings?
photos mine
We struggled with this, too, even though the big fluffy wedding was always the plan and the legal ceremony was almost an afterthought. But after the legal wedding in July we felt married, and went through a lot of the same thoughts as you. Mostly we didn’t feel right getting up and saying our vows and acting like it was the first time we’d said them to each other, so we decided that our big wedding was secretly a vow-renewal (although we told exactly no one that that is what they’d be attending) and the minister slip in a sentence or two about how we’d already said them at our ceremony in july since our marriage isn’t legally recognized in Florida. I’d be curious to know how you end up addressing it on the day itself. (also, two honeymoons is totally a reason to have two weddings, right?)
Hi, Mandy! I loved the sentence “And our marriage is my favourite thing EVER, so I think it deserves as many weddings as it wants!” What an absolutely brilliant idea!
I think a lot of same sex couples have or will struggle with this. I know that once same sex marriage is legal in California Liz and I will have a small legal wedding with just a couple of friends for witnesses. We’re just throwing the big party first. :)