I've been trying to find the best answer for this question/situation everywhere and have asked so many people to which most of them say "it's your life, your business, it doesn't matter what other people think". Backtrack, my husband and I got engaged 12/24/2019 and had our wedding planned and a date set in January of 2020; our original wedding date was set for 4/24/2021. Unfortunately I ran into some health issues in late February and did not have health insurance. My husband and I researched private insurance for myself which would have ran us around $250 a month.. We then looked at what the cost would be for us to add myself to his plan through work and we found out he could change his single plan to a family plan at no additional cost.
After A LOT, and I mean A LOT of discussion, we decided financially that it would make the most sense for us to have a civil ceremony to legalize our marriage so I could get health insurance and get the proper care I needed. Unfortunately due to COVID, we wanted to limit our attendance list for the day as much as we could; we had our parents there in person, my brother officiated the ceremony(he was ordained online and has done other ceremonies for friends in the past) and we had my sister-in-law and nephew, and my husbands sister and her boyfriend there via FaceTime. Originally we didn't want to make a big deal of the day and didn't want to tell anyone what we did(good joke, right?); after you get married, no matter how you do it, it's impossible to keep it a secret from your closest friends and family! Being married is AMAZING! Why would anyone want to keep that a secret? So, we started telling our closest friends and family as soon as we could see them in person because personally we didn't like the idea of calling them and telling them over the phone because we both think marriage is way too exciting of news to share over the phone. The only downfall on that, with COVID in full swing when we got married, it made it incredibly difficult to share with our friends and family because we couldn't see people in person for so long.
5 months later, we have finally had the chance to share with our friends and family that we are married! We still have a large amount of our guests that do not know and we don't want to keep them out of the loop because I do not agree with inviting people to a "wedding" when you are already married, we will be calling our originally planned wedding date our "celebration of marriage". Everything with our situation is so screwy and backwards due to COVID and my health being our main concern; our engagement pictures had to get pushed back because of COVID(not that big of a deal), but then we got married before having the pictures taken.. We finally had the pictures taken a couple weeks ago(we shared with our photographers that we are already married!) and our pictures were posted to social media and labeled as "engagement pictures". We had so many people congratulate us on them and I feel so weird and wrong about it because although they are technically still our engagement photos, we are already married! We never publicly posted on any social media platform of our civil marriage because as we get older, we are trying to limit the amount of our personal life we share on social media(even though posting it on Facebook would be the best way to share with all of our family and friends).
My husband and I will still be celebrating the normal bridal shower, bachelor/bachelorette party, a full blown ceremony(minus the paperwork) and a reception to follow since we had all of this discussed and planned before we legalized our marriage. After all of the backstory and if you're still reading(bless you if you are), these are all of my concerns dilemmas and I feel like I'm thinking WAY too much into this; like a lot of people have told me, "it's our life, our business, why does it matter what others think"?
1. I do not like the idea of calling our originally planned date a "wedding" so we will be calling it and addressing it on invites as our "celebration of marriage". We will also be having a close family friend "officiate" our celebration of married since we no longer need someone who is legally ordained.
2. How the heck do you word something like that for save the dates and invitations?! Is it wrong for us to send out save the dates still? I mean, we are still celebrating with friends and family and we would love for them to save our celebration date, especially because we are having it about an hour away from our hometown.
3. I really would love to send out save the dates and have something formally worded on there about how we are already married but I don't want it to be this big long explanation and honestly have no idea how to word it; including this on our save the dates would be the best and easiest way to inform ALL of our guests that will be invited to our celebration that we are in fact already married!
4. Is it seriously wrong for me to be excited for a bridal shower!? Or for my husband and I to still celebrate our bachelor and bachelorette parties?!?! I have been told that I am "no longer a bride" and that "we are no longer a bachelor or bachelorette" HOW DARE YOU even consider celebrating or having those parties before hand! ....alright ya'll, I get it; YES WE ARE MARRIED, but we did it for health insurance reasons and I personally don't think that should take away from us still wanting to celebrate the "traditional" pre-wedding celebrations like a bridal shower and bachelor/bachelorette party(these will more or less just be a night to hangout with our friends). I also really don't think that I should be told I am no longer a bride; I get it, my actual wedding date is over and my day to shine and be a bride is over, but I didn't get the full experience and would still love to have that.. Is it really wrong for me to still call myself a bride even though I'm a wife?! 
5. What date do we celebrate as our "wedding date"? I'm sad it won't be 4/24/2021(we were purposely getting married on my dads birthday because it fell on a Saturday and because he passed away when I was 3 years old, so that original date was very special to us). We wanted to have our civil ceremony on the 24th of April this year, but unfortunately it fell on a Friday and didn't work for most of us in attendance and I needed the health insurance ASAP and we couldn't wait any longer. Would it be wrong if we celebrated both dates?! I feel like I am thinking way too much into all of this..
If you have read all of this, I sincerely THANK YOU!!! I have been stressing myself out over all of these questions and thoughts and figured it was time to look for some answers. To everyone that will answer, thank you in advance! 
