Civil Marriage then Wedding Ceremony?

As a bride who is having an elopement ceremony so our anniversary falls on the same anniversary as our first kiss to be followed 2 days later with a different ceremony and reception, I think this is just fine. I would however recommend that you let your guests know about this plan before the ceremony.

If you’re planning a religious ceremony, I’d first speak to whoever is officiating that. Certainly for some religions they would be unhappy or unwilling to marry a couple who was already married, so worth a chat

Awww I think that is SO sweet! And i love the idea of surprising your grandparents. I say do it!! It’s a special date to you and your family, and it’s obviously treated them well since it’ll be their 50th anniversary! I think you should surprise your grandparents and not tell anyone else. It’s YOUR big day, and to be blunt no one else should have a say-so on YOUR wedding. I think that if you don’t do it because you are worried about other peoples’ options you are going to regret it.

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It would be considered a vow renewal so that's how they would have to approach it with the officiant.

We actually did this. We had our civil ceremony on 2/16/18 to get him on my insurance since his work was being stupid about making him full time vs a contractor and we had passed the open enrollment time for him to get his own insurance. We then had our wedding ceremony with family and friends in Vegas 10/27/18. The Vegas ceremony was technically a vow renewal since we were already legally married but we wore all the wedding attire and had a reception and all of our guests welcomed it as our wedding ceremony. They all knew going into it that we were already legally married but they didn't care. They were more than happy to celebrate with us during our wedding ceremony vow renewal. So yeah it's not unheard of.

When we called his mom after eloping she actually told us she was thrilled since that's tradition where she is from to have the legal ceremony with the state and a family ceremony later on which is the bigger one.

That's such a sweet idea. I'm sure it would mean the world to your grandparents! If you're doing a religious ceremony after the legal one you will have to speak to your church first. It would be a convalidation ceremony not technically a wedding ceremony since you'll already be married.

We’re thinking about doing something similar! My grandparents wedding anniversary is 9/18 and will be 71 years by the time we get married. We want to go to the courthouse on that day to get legally married and then 9/26 our wedding day, my uncle will do our ceremony in front of everyone and he won’t have to get the officiant license thing because we’ll already be married

We did something similar, but not for family. We are getting married on the Marine Corps birthday - but we are doing it in PA. Due to the PA marriage laws the officiant marrying us wouldn't be able to do it in PA. So we decided on a civil ceremony here in NY and doing the ceremoney/reception for family and friends in PA in november. There was only one day we thought was perfect for the civil ceremony- which was our anniversary!

I think that’s perfectly amazing. You’ll be able to get all the paper work and headaches out fo the way too so after your wedding there isn’t any running around !

I had a destination wedding at a different country and I wanted my legal wedding to be here in the states. I was conflicted because your legal wedding day is the one for all legal documents and not your actual wedding day. We settle for Valentine’s Day since is our dating anniversary and it was 3 weeks before our actual wedding day. We didn’t tell anyone tho and I didn’t felt marry until my actual wedding day.
Now in your case since you do want to tell people I think a cute way is to incorporate it in your ceremony somehow maybe with a reading or a simple announcement. You can also just share this with your grandparents and parents on their own. Something cute is giving them a picture of you two holding your marriage certificate with the 4/4/2020 date.