We may be making a major change of plans. Our wedding is coming up in about two months, but we have some issues that may result in a sudden change--namely, going from about 40 guests to 8 and some really uncomfortable premarital counseling sessions.
The current plan (not set in stone) is to can the church service altogether and just get a self-uniting marriage license from the county courthouse (we live in Pennsylvania where this is a thing) and have my future husband's family sign as the two witnesses (likely his mom and dad). We figure it's no different than any of the old home weddings from the early days. Our church should recognize it, too.
Long story short, my family has been really mean to me as of late and I don't feel comfortable having them at the wedding. He's got a small family and would only have 4 or 5 people there at maximum.
We don't have a wedding party or a reception planned, plus the only person we "hired" was his uncle as a photographer.
Good news is that we didn't send out invitations since we both sort of slacked off with that, nor does my family even remember the day or place of the wedding. His parents seem to like tradition though and we need a good way to explain this to them, but he is beyond relieved that he doesn't have to say vows in front of a lot of people now.
We're thinking of just bumping this up to an ASAP date with getting the license. However, we have a lot of questions.
1. What do we tell the pastor? He's our pastor at the church but his premarital counseling session felt more like an interview than a way to help us with potential challenges of marriage. We got more out of the books he gave us than the session (and still have 2 more to go that neither of us want to attend despite otherwise liking this pastor).
2. What's the best way to handle this with his family? He's 100% on board with this idea and actually prefers it to a ceremony.
Keep in mind the church ceremony is the only thing we have to cancel. We both have our outfits already.
