I'm just wondering what y'all did. We are planning on celebrating our civil ceremony date, but the renewal of vows is the real wedding in my eyes.

Thanks!
Lisa

I personally went to all my guests home.

We only had the one wedding ceremony at our church, so that's the date we used.

We invited them in person.

Wait, what is a wedding announcement? I thought that was something that showed up in the newspaper. If it's something you send to people, then send the date(s) you want them to show up to something. If you're sending it to people after the fact, use both dates and say what happened on both dates.

Both our wedding invitations and the engagement announcement in our newspaper both had the same date. We didn't send wedding announcements after the fact.

We mailed a few out, mostly to his family and friends in Canada even though we knew they wouldn't be able to come. We have one to frame, a few left over for scrapbooking (which his mom is making that for us) and mailed a few here in the States. This was for our garden wedding...we'll do a reaffirmation invitation when we do that later on in Nova Scotia.

Oops! You are right... I should have specified... I just called it an announcement b/c I am planning on sending them after the fact. We are doing the courthouse thing in my hometown so the family can be there... then a couple of weeks later going down to Key West - just the two of us - for an intimate ceremony. So I am planning on sending out announcements since we are not inviting anyone to the Key West ceremony.

How is it possible to plan for a wedding when there's no way to know exactly when a visa will be received? This is frustrating. I have not made any wedding plans. I will wait until he is here. LOL

Lai stayed in Hong Kong for 14 weeks after getting her visa, since that was the earliest we could book the traditional Chinese wedding reception, and we were also trying to arrange a wedding date that would enable her eldest niece to be the maid of honour. The wedding was three weeks after we arrived from HK. So we had over four months for planning -- more than enough time

We used the timelines here and guessed that it would be about 6 months before he would be able to come over here. We didn't put any deposits down, we would just do the research together over the internet and see what we wanted. We didn't buy the plane ticket until he had the visa in hand. But it turned out to be just as we predicted - actually it happened a month before we predicted! Since we are not having a big wedding, there is no planning for the courthouse - beyond picking a date to show up *wink*. And as for the renewal of vows, that is just for the two of us, so we will make reservations and deposits once he is here. I guess that we are lucky that neither of us wants a big 'to do'. However, I am concerned about the announcements b/c I know that takes a few weeks to print up and be delivered. So, I'm feeling the crunch to get that done now.

Haven't sent them out yet.