Marriage plans

[jack]

After a certain amount of internal musing, the currently prominent plan is to have a wedding (with vows, contracts, awnings, as many of our friends and relatives as we can manage, etc) in spring 2012, but the necessary legal arrangements beforehand on 29th Feb 2012, the anniversary of our officially getting together three years ago (with just us, parents and two-three siblings or witnesses each).

The reasons for this are:

* We really want to be able to count the anniversary from our existing anniversary. I was surprised we felt strongly about it, but we did.
* We don't want a church wedding or a synagogue wedding, and we want to have the wedding in Cambridge town, and there are no venues with civil wedding licences we like there.
* We would rather have the wedding in spring when there's slightly more light, at a weekend, and outside academic term, when some guests will find it slightly easier to make it.

Obviously we can arrange anything we want, but I want to ask if splitting the event like that sounds sane to other people?

The biggest risk is that the actual ceremony will feel like it "won't count", but if it's arranged beforehand, and includes all of the things we find significant, we think it will feel ok.

The other possibilities are (a) hold the wedding on the 29th, even though it's midweek (b) forget the anniversary, and have the wedding in spring, with the registry office arrangements earlier that day, or the day before (c) find a civil wedding licensed venue we like.

The other, related, question, is that we planned to, instead of taking the two of us half way round the globe on a honeymoon, take away a medium sized group of close friends for a week to a cottage (or castle) somewhere in the UK. Does that also sound sane?

We hope to get this sorted _now_, as in, this week if at all possible. At which point we will have a date and a venue and can move on to other planning, and can tell people a provisional date.

Comments

[naath]

That all sounds sane to me; it's important to have the wedding you want (well, to the extent you can afford it etc) not to have a wedding that's just like everyone else's.

[crazyscot]

+1 Weddings are highly individual affairs.

[jack]

*hugs* Thank you.

Although, I mean, I think the chances of Liv and I feeling we have to do something because everyone else does it pretty low. I was thinking more, if anyone saw any upsides or downsides we _might_ care about :)

[naath]

heh

I dunno maybe you don't wanna have a huge party-planning stress and then a big group holiday w/attendant faff, stress, d00m etc. Or maybe you do. I'd think hard about the stress aspects of group holidays though.

[jack]

Hm. Excellent point. We might actually see if any of our friends would be willing to do organising (not the booking, but for the trip itself). That would probably be much, much more useful for us than toasters :)

[naath]

Toasters: rarely a good wedding gift. You probably need to make a list of what would be good so people don't buy you them.

[rmc28]

We learned from our friends Gideon & Jenny. They said "oh, nothing, or if you must, John Lewis vouchers". They got given lots of stuff anyway, and much of it was perhaps not what they'd have most found useful.

So I specified a range of things and made it clear up front that we were NOT touting for gifts, and the overwhelming generosity of our friends and family was at least channelled in ways we most appreciated ;)

[naath]

Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who think you absolutely MUST buy a gift (my cousin and his wife said "nothing or money-for-honeymoon" and my mother insisted on buying STUFF because apparently in-her-opinion both nothing and money are 'rude'*). Best to make a list of things you want, or at least could use.

*as if buying someone a toaster when they told you they don't want one isn't rude

[jack]

I sympathise with her, in that buying nothing or vouches does feel odd to me. But she really needs to be slapped with an etiquette book that says that passive-aggressively disregarding people's wishes, even if they're not perfect, ISN'T MORE POLITE :)

[jack]

:) That's one of many things we want to publish a decision on, but are less critical-path than the ceremony.

I think most of our friends are happy to not assume we need to set up a house together from scratch (especially if we're (a) NOT and (b) already have lots of really nice toasters), but I know people will want to give gifts, and to decide what would be most appropriate (probably some house stuff, some fun stuff, some stuff for people to contribute to if they want).

[lavendersparkle]

We got a really expensive Dualit toaster as a wedding present. Very nice.

[jack]

I can certainly think of toasters I would be exited to get, yet wouldn't go out and buy for myself or for Liv :) But I don't expect everyone to be able to give me one :)

[emperorzombie]

I have planned group holidays for medium-sized groups, and I like planning things, and I'm not sure I would want to try it while also planning a wedding. But I like planning things, so I'm not sure I'd want to pass the planning off to someone else if it were my honeymoon - it's the sort of once-a-lifetime thing where I'd want it all to be done how I would like it.

If you want recommendations for nice cottages and bigger then ping me when you're doing the planning and I will dig out some websites. I would definitely go a couple of days before everyone else, and you could enjoy having a vast empty castle to run around in jby yourselves :)

[jack]

If you want recommendations for nice cottages and bigger then ping me

Thank you! We definitely do: we're looking at this now, as it's likely to be as big a constraint as the venue.

[kaberett]

The Landmark Trust, if you haven't come across them, hire out lots of REALLY AMAZING property.

C particularly recommends Auchinleck House as a place that's been on his to-do list for a long time, but that should not, I feel, be your primary consideration :-)

[corrvin]

I think splitting the getting-married and the wedding (the public celebration of getting-married) sounds just fine. Then you won't have to fuss with licenses and things and can do whatever you like on the big day.

I also think taking a close group of friends somewhere for a week sounds fantastic. When my ex and I got married, after the reception we had to stay around and clean up the venue, but then everyone went over to a friend's and we had a hot tub party with the leftover potluck from the reception until late in the night, at which point my spouse and I went home to be by ourselves a bit. The hot tub party was fantastic and one of my best memories of the wedding.

[jack]

Thank you

[lavendersparkle]

I think more and more people are doing the legal and the thing you invite people to bits separately. Two weddings I'm going to this year had them separately and one I went to last year. It's what we would have done except Alec particularly wanted to get legally married in church (and it's more complicated if you're CofE because the church can't do weddings which aren't legally recognised) and we were able to come up with a compromise which worked for us. The wording of the civil ceremony is a bit rubbish.

[kerrypolka]

The wording of the civil ceremony is a bit rubbish.

Yeah, it really is.

[rmc28]

I think splitting the legal bit and the party bit is totally sane, and in any case my only advice to people getting married is to have the wedding they want, not anyone else.

On the honeymoon, you don't have to go halfway around the world, but I would strongly encourage a short period together away from all other pressures and responsibilities shortly after the wedding. Time and space to enjoy each other and just each other can be a valuable foundation for the long-term project of marriage, and a source of happy memories and shared purposes for the decades to come.

Friends and family are wonderful, but the heart of marriage is the lifelong pair-bond, so give that pair-bond its own share of celebratory time at the beginning.

So I'm not saying don't take the close friends on a cottage holiday, but in your shoes, I'd plan it such that they either left early or joined you late, giving the two of you a few days alone together.

[jack]

Thank you.

[redbird]

It seems sane to me, but I'm coming at this from the viewpoint that for me and most people I know, a wedding is about announcing, solidifying, and/or confirming an existing relationship, not about starting something new. So why not strengthen it twice? Why not solidify it one month and celebrate with your friends the next?

(I'm not denying or slighting the legal effects: but having all that _and_ starting a household and a socially accepted sexual relationship, in an older model, is different from having all that with someone you are already sharing a household with, and in a social context that does not expect people to wait for a wedding in order to be lovers.)

[forestofglory]

I'm attending 3 weddings this summer. Two the the couples are legally married already (due to immigration issues) but the weddings still feel real to me.

[seryn]

I think it might help if you could hold the ceremonial wedding soon after the legal paperwork wedding. But there are rational reasons for having the ceremonial parts on days guests would find convenient.

If people are traveling from far away, it would be nice if you didn't leave immediately without them, because it usually seems like going to someone's wedding is just lip service to visiting them since you see them from afar for a few minutes and then they're gone. I don't go to weddings anymore (although I might make an exception if it was under an hour from here by car).

Finally, I completely understand why a certain date would be important.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Well, when Gareth and I eventually get married, we plan to have a registry office ceremony on our anniversary, and then a Party of some sort (or dinner or whatever) during Easter vac., so it sounds sensible to us. Whether we are a good benchmark of sensibleness is rather more debatable ;)

[hairyears]

Whatever works, works best: so far you are making good sense, and the holiday idea has the makings of good fun... A rare combination.

However, you have only yourselves to blame if every greetings card you ever receive in connection with your wedding carries the visual motif or theme of toasters.

[shreena]

I think it's fine to split the legal ceremony from the big wedding (I did it myself!) but I think what you're doing is slightly different from the way that most people do it. Most people do it and still view the big wedding as the "real" wedding - they just couldn't, for logistical reasons, have the legal ceremony and the friends/family ceremony at the same time.

But what you're doing is slightly different from that because, on some level, you clearly do see the legal ceremony as the "real" one - you'd be counting it and not the friends/family ceremony the "real" one for wedding anniversary purposes. I think that confuses the issue - both for your guests (some of whom I would have thought will find it quite confusing (and potentially offensive) that you had a wedding that they were invited to but you count another date as your wedding anniversary) and for you as a couple. To expand a bit on how it might be confusing for you as a couple, if there are ceremonial aspects to the friends/family wedding that are really important to you, you as a couple have your emotions around getting married split between two ceremonies which I at least would have found strange.

I think more straightforward would be having the legal ceremony on the date that you want and having a celebration on a later date with friends and family that isn't a "wedding" or a "ceremony" but just a large party. That way, it's pretty clear what's the wedding and what's a celebration of the wedding.

But, at the end of the day, obviously it's what you both want that matters.