Legally married BEFORE or AFTER your DW?

[RyanAmanda]

It looks like me and FH are going to do the legal part at home and our DW will be symbolic.

 

However...just when we make one decision, there's another one looming! Now we need to decide whether to do the legal part BEFORE we leave for Mexico or AFTER. I know there's a lot of threads on the pros/cons of getting legally married at home as opposed to on your DW, but I couldn't find anything on WHEN to do the legal part.

 

So...when did you do the legal part? And why did you decide it get married before the DW vs after (or vice verse).

[Bride010101]

Good question. I hadn't really though about getting married after the DW.... as we are currently planning on doing it shortly before we leave. My only thought is that I know some resorts require proof (via marriage license) for the symbolic ceremony - as it generally is cheaper.

[Martha]

It doesn't really matter to us, because we will count our symbolic wedding day as our anniversary....

[dragonfly]

We did it hours before we left for our DW. It was important to me that after we said our vows at our DW we were actually going to be married, it wouldn't have felt right if we still had to do the legal part when we got home.

[Kelly C]

We are doing ours before we leave. And we will use our DW date for our aniversry date. Only our family will know.

[1elephant]

did it before to get all of the legalities out of the way. only our families knew, but now lots of ppl know. i'm bad at keeping it a secret b/c the way i look at it now is 'who cares?' we're married!

[Davematthews16]

Yep, we're doing it about 1 1/2 weeks before we leave. Of course to us it's just legal paperwork, and our Anniversary will be on the day of the ceremony. I personally don't want to have a blood test in a foreign country either YiKeS lol

[EricaG]

We are doing it before and using our DW as our wedding date. I wouldn't want to do it after personnally, but some people do choose to do so.

[jreule]

OK quick question. When you fill out the legal paperwork in the US, do you verbally have to say your vows?? I dont want to lose the emotion and special feeling by doing it in the US first?!?! But it would be nice to have it all taken care of!!!

[Ava]

Neither, we just want to do the real deal, personally.