Legal Ceremony HEELPPPP!!

istephiez · January 21, 2009

Hi ladies

I am getting married at The Royal in May and my fiancee and I had planned on having a friend be the officiant and legally get married here in LA prior to going. Suddenly the family piped in and they have an issue not being a part of the actual legal aspect of the marriage (I can't help but be frustrated with this but I am being too logical apparently) Anyway, my family is in Seattle, his in NY and Florida and we are in LA so trying to do this prior to our trip is nearly impossible. The next logical step would be to legally get married while in Mexico. The problem with that is that we can't change the ceremony when doing it legally and I want to add in our own flavor and traditions (I am catholic and he is Jewish). Anyway this leads me to my current problem. My best solution is to have a legal person come a few hours before the ceremony and legally marry us with our family present, take photos and then have a friend lead our own created ceremony. Has anyone else encountered this type of problem and if so how did you resolve it? Would the hotel allow us to do something like this? Is it really difficult to legally get married there (i know about the 4 day rule already). Please let me know your opinions on this!! Thanks!

Betsy · January 21, 2009

We did something kind of the same - we flew our Catholic priest down with us and our resort The Moon Palace had the justice of the peace do his part first where we signed the documents, it was about 10 minutes and then our Catholic priest did the "real" part of our ceremony and the Moon Palace was perfectly fine with this - our wedding was the last one of the day so there really was no time conflict or anything. It worked out perfectly! I would contact your resort and make sure this would be okay first but honestly you shouldn't have a problem - it's not "hard" to get legally married in Mexico.

Ashleykmorgan · January 21, 2009

Betsy,

I am thinking of doing that exact thing. Did you have the JP do his part in private or did he kind of do it along with your priest? I am just having a hard time convincing my resort to do it...so any advice on the process would be helpful, thanks!

SunBride · January 21, 2009

are you sure your resort won't let you incorporate the parts you want into their legal ceremony? At my resort you could add your own vows, readings, etc to the legal ceremony, you just couldn't change the necessary legal part.

mrsbancroft2be · January 21, 2009

My FI and I are going to be getting legally married on Friday night during our rehersal by a Mexican Judge (which will be short and sweet) and then we are having our real ceremony with our pastor from home on Saturday afternoon. As of now, it looks like it will work great!