What are/were your wedding plans?

[david'sgirl 134]

We were married in the registrar's office in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland. My mother in law and sister in law were to be our witnesses but neither drives so David's brother in law came to drive them. His dad and partner came along as well. I wore a white sundress and veil and carried thistle and roses while David wore a kilt and shirt. we had a meal in a local restaurant following the ceremony and took some photos outside. His sister made us a cake and we had that back at the place they had rented. We spent the rest of the week there and then I had to fly back to US alone and apply for the visa. We planned to have a gathering here with my family but then my baby sister got engaged and my parents were ill and it kept getting pushed off so we never did. This was not a first marriage for either of us so we were more focused on the marriage and less on the wedding. When I was a lot younger I got caught up in the whole huge wedding thing and before I knew it I was married when I should have called it off. This time there were no wedding jitters because I was dead certain and so happy. In the end it really didnt matter how we did it as long as we ended up together.

Aww this is a nice thread!

My husband and I got married in Boston. We would've preferred to elope, but our families didn't like that idea at all, and we thought it was better to have their support given our situation. It was all planned in about two months. We had 9 guests: parents, siblings and their spouses, and my grandma. Our officiant was a justice of the peace, lovely woman named Leslie that I found online through her hundreds of rave reviews. We had the ceremony in Fan Pier Plaza, which is a pretty park on Boston harbor. It was a free venue for us since we were only there for half an hour and didn't have any furniture, decorations, etc. We had a perfectly beautiful day for the outdoor ceremony (luckily!), got lots of nice photos in the park, then had our reception aboard the cruise ship Odyssey. The Odyssey was docked just across the harbor from where we had the ceremony, which was pretty cool -- one of my favorite photos of us in the park has the ship visible in the background. We had a nice brunch and harbor cruise with everyone wandering around above decks enjoying the open bar, lol. We kept it pretty low key and were both really happy with how things turned out. We were even happier to have the wedding done and run off to the White Mountains together for our honeymoon, though!

That sounds lovely! I wonder if we are neighbors....

[BOS_LHR 829]

We were married in the registrar's office in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland. My mother in law and sister in law were to be our witnesses but neither drives so David's brother in law came to drive them. His dad and partner came along as well. I wore a white sundress and veil and carried thistle and roses while David wore a kilt and shirt. we had a meal in a local restaurant following the ceremony and took some photos outside. His sister made us a cake and we had that back at the place they had rented. We spent the rest of the week there and then I had to fly back to US alone and apply for the visa. We planned to have a gathering here with my family but then my baby sister got engaged and my parents were ill and it kept getting pushed off so we never did. This was not a first marriage for either of us so we were more focused on the marriage and less on the wedding. When I was a lot younger I got caught up in the whole huge wedding thing and before I knew it I was married when I should have called it off. This time there were no wedding jitters because I was dead certain and so happy. In the end it really didnt matter how we did it as long as we ended up together.

That sounds lovely! I wonder if we are neighbors....

That's really all we wanted, too -- just to be married at the end of the day. Ways and means weren't important, and that was a pretty great feeling. It's exciting to see another Boston-based couple on VJ! How does your husband like it here? Did he have difficulty adjusting? I see some posts on the UK subforum that make me nervous, but I'm hoping that some of the issues other members have faced won't be so prominent since Boston is a reasonably diverse place to begin with.

[Jakanna 0]

We're hoping that my visa will come through in late September, but we don't know yet, we're still waiting to find out my interview date, so it would be WAY too stressful to organise a proper wedding based on uncertainty (and also too stressful to try and organise it from a distance!). Plus the Pacific NW is not at its best in winter, and it's really important to me that my friends and family are able to be there. My parents and my best friend will be there whenever we have the wedding, I know that. But I don't want people to come over at a horrible time of year just for one day.

So we've decided to do a courthouse wedding when I get there (so we can apply for AOS and I can get my EAD to work, and meet the K1 visa requirement), and then are planning what we consider to be the "proper wedding" - i.e. making our vows to each other in front of our family and friends at Easter 2014. That means that my parents, my best friend and her family (including my goddaughter and godson), along with most of my closest friends, (and my fiance's out of state friends with kids in school) will be able to attend, and will also be able to make it into a proper holiday and do other things while they're there - skiing in Canada / sunning themselves in California / hiking in the Cascades. And it might entice a few of my other good friends over as well! We've booked the venue already (on the beach, just out of Portland, a few of my fiance's extended family have been married there, it's beautiful), one of his friends has a band who will play, one of my friends will take the photos, the rest we'll sort out after I move (oh, and we've already picked our cake supplier too - I guess that says a lot about our priorities!).

It feels odd in some ways, we'll wear our wedding rings after the courthouse wedding date, and we will feel married at that point, but we're rationalising that with our belief that a wedding should be a community thing, that there is something additional, something special, about making that committment in front of family and friends. And part of the traditional wedding ceremony asks those present to support the newlyweds, and that's always been a beautiful part of the ceremony for me, and we want that too.

Now I'm not the kind of girl who had her dream wedding planned since the age of 15 or whatever, but I guess I always thought that if I did get married, I'd be surrounded by my family and friends (and his). This whole process has really put a spanner in the works (when I was 15, I didn't consider the possibility of marrying an american!), so we're trying to make the best of it. If that means having two weddings - one legal, one "real", then so be it.

Sounds beautiful! Congrats and good luck! My real wedding is planned for April 12, 2014 and so excited! Are you having an officiant read your vows again at your real wedding? Or more or a vow renewal, i guess?

[Owen_London 65]

We've arrived back in Houston yesterday after ten days in the UK, culminating in our "UK wedding" on Saturday, so it feels great to post in this thread.

We had our US wedding on a Friday evening, 30th November, just my wife and I, our three kids (my step-children), my wife's Mum and sister, and my Mum and brother, plus our officiant and our photographer, who were both really nice. We booked a limo to take us to a really good steakhouse nearby. On the Saturday, we had our Houston friends over for a party at our house, where we laid on Tex-Mex from our favourite local restaurant, and a bouncy house filling most of our back yard. It was easy to do, and great fun.

Our UK do was a little bigger. We had a "renewal of vows" ceremony, run by the registrar. This is very similar to a civil wedding, with a few changes in wording, and we got to sign a certificate instead of the marriage register. Everything else was just like a big wedding day, including a beautiful venue that was a maze inside (Horsley Park, near Guildford), gorgeous flowers, decorations, my old brass band, a drinks reception and a three-course meal for about a hundred people, and a disco. Oh, plus a bouncy castle on the croquet lawn.

A few days beforehand, I was thinking that the UK do would be OK, but that we were already married so it was a waste of time and money, and it was upsetting for my wife because she had no guests coming from the US. But now it's over, it feels worth it for so many reasons, and I'm so glad we did it. Everyone had a great time, especially us, our kids had a great time on their first visit outside the US, and we got to see all my wonderful friends and family again.

[BOS_LHR 829]

We've arrived back in Houston yesterday after ten days in the UK, culminating in our "UK wedding" on Saturday, so it feels great to post in this thread.

We had our US wedding on a Friday evening, 30th November, just my wife and I, our three kids (my step-children), my wife's Mum and sister, and my Mum and brother, plus our officiant and our photographer, who were both really nice. We booked a limo to take us to a really good steakhouse nearby. On the Saturday, we had our Houston friends over for a party at our house, where we laid on Tex-Mex from our favourite local restaurant, and a bouncy house filling most of our back yard. It was easy to do, and great fun.

Our UK do was a little bigger. We had a "renewal of vows" ceremony, run by the registrar. This is very similar to a civil wedding, with a few changes in wording, and we got to sign a certificate instead of the marriage register. Everything else was just like a big wedding day, including a beautiful venue that was a maze inside (Horsley Park, near Guildford), gorgeous flowers, decorations, my old brass band, a drinks reception and a three-course meal for about a hundred people, and a disco. Oh, plus a bouncy castle on the croquet lawn.

A few days beforehand, I was thinking that the UK do would be OK, but that we were already married so it was a waste of time and money, and it was upsetting for my wife because she had no guests coming from the US. But now it's over, it feels worth it for so many reasons, and I'm so glad we did it. Everyone had a great time, especially us, our kids had a great time on their first visit outside the US, and we got to see all my wonderful friends and family again.

I'm loving the bouncy house recurring theme! Glad you had a fantastic time and it was all worth the effort