What day do we celebrate?

I plan to celebrate the day I legally married.

I would celebrate the anniversary of my wedding, not the anniversary of the day I threw I party.

I would celebrate the date of the legal wedding. However, there is no rule that says you can't do both.

I wondered this same thing before I had my minimony, and people can be quick to say what they *think they would do* if they were in the position....although they truly have no idea because they've never *been* in the position. It's really up to you, and take what people say with a grain of salt (even me)! So for me, I've had my minimony but still haven't had the more traditional wedding/sequel wedding/vow renewal/whatever you wanna call it (and you can call yours whatever you want!)...and who knows if we'll get to have the more traditional wedding. But anyway, as of now, we chose to celebrate our anniversary as the day of the minimony when we exchanged vows with only immediate family present (pre-pandemic, so even that would be hard for us to pull off again these days). And if our minimony was different, we may view our anniversary differently, so it's all relative! I had envisioned making a photo book with the pictures from the traditional/sequel wedding and doing a smaller anniversary-like celebration on the anniversary of the sequel wedding (maybe looking through the photo book and cooking a nice dinner and talking about our favorite memories from that day/weekend). But time will tell if that ends up happening or not!

We had a minimony and are having a big wedding in March 2021. We plan to celebrate the day we legally got married as our anniversary

Most people choose to celebrate the day they actually got married (which makes sense, you celebrate the years you have been married, not the years since you had a party). If you want to celebrate the reception date as well though, there’s nothing that says you can’t do something special on that day also!

I would celebrate the day you legally married.

I also agree with Chrysta about celebrating both. Maybe a big celebration for you actual anniversary and something smaller for your reception date.

My situation may be unique but I think it's relevant to this. My FH is French living in the US on a work visa and we got engaged in July. Our wedding is planned for September 25, 2021 in Spain. Spain has a two year residency requirement before being able to have a civil ceremony there so that wasn't an option regardless. That being the case, we decided to go to the courthouse a few months ago so we could get his green card application started (takes up to 10 months and you can't leave the country during that time!)

Truthfully, I'd have to go back and search through photos to see what day that even was lol, because it was just paperwork. I don't personally think a wedding is just a party. Signing a legal document didn't mean much but exchanging vows in front of all of our nearest and dearest and then celebrating your love with everyone afterwards is what makes a wedding to me. That is the day I will celebrate as my anniversary for sure. So as everyone is saying, it just depends on your point of view!

Depends on why you have two dates. I know people who got legally married for technical reasons like health insurance or green card then had a wedding celebration with family and some celebrate the legal date, some the celebratory date, and some both dates. Then there’s covid reasons and a lot of people postponed the big wedding but got married on their original date because it was important to them so that’s the day they celebrate. Personally we will celebrate our anniversary on our minimony date instead of our big wedding date because that was also our dating anniversary and the date was important to us. We may acknowledge our wedding date too idk yet but not the same as our original date. I don’t think there are any wrong answers here.

I know a number of people who have done the courthouse elopement and that is the only day they celebrate because it's the official legal event. A party afterward can be held any day but that does not change the anniversary date.