Hush hush legal ceremony

Hey ladies, I am curious if anyone else is feeling this way...

We are getting married in Mexico May 2012(6 months!!) but we plan on doing the legal ceremony here a week or 2 before. I have not checked into whats involved yet but am hoping we just have to go to the court house & sign some papers. We do not plan on exchanging rings or anything.  We want to do that in Mexico. And we dont want to tell anyone about this because we dont want people to think Mexico is just a waste of time esp from the people who complained about it(father!) and we dont want anyone to come along when we do this either.

So now I am having a hard time not telling a few people. When my friends or our mothers asksay things about the wedding I sort of feel bad & almost like I am lying to them about the ceremony in Mexico when technically we will already be married.

And I am also wondering if they do it different in Mexico if you are not doing the legal. For example they dont do the finger prints & signing the doc...if we dont do this stuff then will people realize this isnt legal!?!

How has everyone handled this? Just dont think of it that way & not worry about it or about people finding out? Maybe its just me & I am being paranoid! 

Hi Sharon (and fellow Philly gal),

We are doing the same thing.  We are treating our legal ceremony as a formality, almost like applying for your license just with a little extra  added on.  Our anniversary is going to be our wedding day in the DR.

We are getting a blessing from a pastor in the DR and we have a copy of the ceremony.  I would never know that this wasn't real.  He is even creating a certificate for us to sign so it looks more real.  I think if you treat your day in Mexico as your actual day no one will know the difference.  Most people don't know the legal steps that need to occur in Mexico so finger prints, blood work, etc are not being done will go unnoticed. 

I wouldn't worry!  Enjoy your day on May 3rd!

-Cort

We're having our legal "ceremony" in Canada, and we're being honest with friends and family about it.  I think some people find it a bit strange, but others are pretty supportive when we tell them everything that's involved with the legal marriage in Mexico (e.g., blood tests, cost, etc). However, I have another friend who basically pretended their DW was the legal ceremony.  She took her marriage certificate, scanned it, blanked out all of the signatures in photoshop and changed it to say "Costa Rica" instead of Alberta... or something like that.  So they signed the doctored version at the DW in front of friends and family to give it a bit more of an "official" feel. 

We won't be signing any fake papers at ours, but we've made it clear with our marriage commissioner that the legal wedding is just paperwork.  We aren't having any sort of ceremony to go along with it, we aren't exchanging rings, etc. Our REAL wedding is going to be the one in Mexico, regardless of where and when the papers were signed.

Hello!  We went to City Hall one week before our wedding in regular clothes and picked up our marriage certificate from the City Clerk.  We didn't exchange rings or tell anyone except our parents.  She read a nice poem for us and only our parents attended.  It was over in less than 4 minutes and not emotional at all.  Our pastor had us sign a wedding certificate during the symbolic ceremony.  No one knew the difference  

Thank you all for your feedback! I feel better now!

We plan on using Mexico as our anniversary so I probably shouldnt dwell on the legal day too much. Thanks again, another reason why I love this site...my FI is no help when talking about this crap!

We are doing the same thing!  Quietly, only legal, in Canada, and the emotional and 'real' deal will be in Mexico.

The only problem is FI kept telling people and he is a horrible liar. LOL- so now ALL questions are directed to me and I am the one saying "We're getting married in Mexico."  That's all people need to know.

We are also getting married here legally, then ceremoniously in Mexico. Our friend is an ordained minister and will do the paperwork here. He is also coming to Mexico and will be performing the ceremony there. We are not telling anyone that the technicality will be done before we ever go and it doesn't bother me at all. To me, the paperwork doesn't really matter much. The ceremony is the important part!!!!

We're in the same boat so to speak. First the FI was dead set on doing everything legal in Mexico. It took me a little while to convince him otherwise. He was the one worried that making it legal in the states and not Mexico would take away from "the big day". I finally convinced him that the cost + effort wasn't worth it, and the legal stuff here wouldn't be any different than going to get our marriage license if we were doing the ceremony here. 

We aren't telling anyone at this point that Mexico won't be the legal one, but that could change with so much time to go. Mexico will be the real deal, so in my mind the paperwork doesn't matter. 

Us too! We're going to do the legal ceremony up here but treat it like the formality of getting the license. We'll have just our parents there, and will take them out for dinner afterwards. We're keeping it on the DL, although I have been honest when people asked. They all seem to be understanding of why we'd choose to take care of it in the US rather than deal with the extra cost/hassle.

We are getting married in 2014 and doing a Destination Wedding. The reason why we are waiting so long is coz we just bought a house and are moving in 2012. So we are doing a legal ceremony wedding for technicality or as a formality since we are getting the house together. But we have to wait til 2014 coz of that and my FIs best friend is also doing a DW as well in 2013. We don't mind waiting till 2014 coz we will financially be ready for it then. It does suck a little coz I love the planning of it and have so many ideas. But it would be too much with a house to do a wedding at the same time. We are only having our parents come and our best friends, but most people understand why we are doing it. We want people to know that our 2014 wedding is a big deal as all our friends and family will be there. So I don't think it's a waste of time. I've been a bridesmaid so many times, I deserve a nice big wedding too! lol