legal marriage before "wedding date"

[kirstenpw 2]

My fiancé is moving from AU to the US once the Visa is approved.

Seeing as we are not approved yet and don't have an arrival date it is impossible to plan a wedding date, and as it stands now it looks like he will come in our ( US ) winter.

He has a large number of family and friends that want to come to the wedding but need more than 90 days to plan the trip, and we don't want them all making the journey here in winter.

We have talked about doing a civil ceremony to meet the 90 day Visa requirements, and then plan our family and friend ceremony for next summer. The problem is we don't want the civil ceremony to take away the magic and significance of making our vows before family and friends.

Anyone else planning on doing something like this?

What do you call the ceremony that happens after you are already legally married?

Do we send out a wedding an announcement after our civil ceremony and then invite them to our celebration at a later date?

Any and all thoughts on this topic would be much appreciated

[TBoneTX 43,022]

We have talked about doing a civil ceremony to meet the 90 day Visa requirements, and then plan our family and friend ceremony for next summer. The problem is we don't want the civil ceremony to take away the magic and significance of making our vows before family and friends.

1. Anyone else planning on doing something like this?

2. What do you call the ceremony that happens after you are already legally married?

3. Do we send out a wedding an announcement after our civil ceremony and then invite them to our celebration at a later date?

Any and all thoughts on this topic would be much appreciated

1. People do this ALL the time, because it makes the most sense. Repeat the vows at the big party.

2. Anything that you want to call it that makes sense to you.

3. You can. Completely up to you.

[Moderator hat on]

Thread moved from Off Topic to General Immigration Discussion.

[Lainie B 465]

This is exactly what we did. We had the legal wedding at the courthouse to get the marriage certificate, so I could file AOS as soon as possible. Later on we had our ceremony with family and friends. We had a friend of ours "officiate" the wedding. We had the walk down the aisle, the vows, the reception etc. The only thing that was different was that the legal part - the signing of the wedding certificate - had already happened. Most of the people at our wedding weren't even aware of that - why should they be told, and why would they care?

Lots of people in your situation do it this way. The hardest part is figuring out which anniversary to celebrate in subsequent years.

[isabooo 27]

We did the same, we got married the day after I arrived so we could fill for aos asap then had a big party with friends and family a few months after. You know, even if it was just us and a friend to witness,and we both went dressed in jeans, it still was a very special day, best day of my life.