Married in the states first...

Cabobride and Bernie...

Check your resorts requirements, but for our resort's symbolic ceremony, you have to bring your marriage license. I'm not sure about signing anything there since legally you're not "getting married" there.

The technicalities as I understand them, may be different by state. We live in Chicago and plan to get our marriage license before we leave, but not actually having a ceremony until we get to Cancun. My fi has been looking into this and apparently, after you get your marriage license (at least in Illinois), and you profess to being married in front of witnesses in the same location/state/city as the courthouse where you obtained the marriage license, you are technically married.

I was worried about the marriage not being legal if we did it this way, but apparently, it's okay. He and I would sign in the marriage license instead of an officiant. It sounds weird to me but he's been doing a lot research on this.

If anyone's heard anything different, please speak up! I don't want to find out years from now that it's not legal!

Since we are talking about getting married in the states first......does anyone have any thoughts on wearing your real dress vs. saving it for your Mexico wedding? Thought about it, but not sure if I want FI to see it before everyone else. I want to make sure that WOW factor is there for- what I consider my REAL wedding. I am thinking I might save it....is this a bad decision?

I'm with SMF47....probably going to really downplay the outfit to the courthouse. Maybe a simple, classy suit so we can still go out to a nice restaurant afterwards to have our own little celebration.

We are also getting married before we head to Mexico. I don't think there are any rules about a time frame, but I did think about my passport. We are going to get married but I am not going to legally change my last name until we get home, that way I don't have to worry about my name not being correct on my passport.

I am going to wear a different dress to the courthouse. We are having a set of grandparents who are not traveling to Mexico come to the courthouse to be our witnesses. We will probably go out to eat or something afterwards.

Bernie...

Where in Chicago do you live? We're in the west loop!

To answer your question, we're just going to the courthouse to get the marriage license, but not doing the ceremony with the JOP. Our ceremony will be in Mexico, so we'll sign the license ourselves once we get back from Mexico and have a reception here in Chicago. This is where it gets really technical and legal...thank goodness FI is an attorney and can talk to some judges about all this....frankly, I'm still confused. But the best way I can describe it is that as long as you both believe that you're getting married when you get the license, and you both believe you're married after the ceremony (wherever the "pomp and circumstance" happens), you are legally viewed as married in the eyes of the courts. For some reason, my FI doesn't like the idea of having the JOP do any kind of ceremony at the courthouse. If we can get a judge friend of his to do it in an intimate setting, not with a bunch of other brides/grooms in a room, we'll do that. Otherwise, we're skipping that part and signing the license ourselves when we return. It's complicated, but FI is certain we can do this and everything will be fine. It's too confusing to me and I've probably butchered the details trying to describe it here.

But my understanding about bringing the license to the resort...at Moon Palace, you do have to bring it. I think because the ceremony -- if you're not doing the civil ceremony -- is seen as a vow renewal. So I guess they want proof that you're already married before they'll do the symbolic/catholic ceremony.

We are having the non legal wedding at the Excellence Cancun. We plan on just getting married at the courthouse or whatever a few weeks before we go down. What all is needed to be brought with us to Mexico? My bride doesn't plan on changing her name right away so we won't have to mess with the passport change. Does the Excellence need to see documentation even though nothing legal is going to happen?