Destination wedding

My cousin got married in Mexico. She got a dress, bridesmaids, groomsmen, dad walked her down the aisle, reception, everything. They did a "symbolic ceremony"... where really the only difference from a "real" ceremony was the signing of the marriage license. And they even had the hotel print a "fake" one to sign during the ceremony.

They got married about 2 weeks later at home, in front of the Christmas tree at her parent's house.

I think she definitely felt like the Mexico ceremony was real. It's the day they celebrate as their wedding anniversary.

I would most definitely suggest doing your legal ceremony AFTER the destination wedding... so that the first time for everything is with your guests.

Also, treat the destination one like a wedding. Night before traditions, morning of getting ready, get a dress, full ceremony, reception, etc... The ONLY thing that will be different is not signing a real marriage certificate.

Do not tell your guests you aren't doing a real ceremony. Keep it super quiet. Technically to do your legal ceremony you'd also need to be there 5 business days ahead of time and do a blood test.

All in all, do what you want, but if you go destination, embrace it, go all out, and treat it like your real wedding. Then do a quiet Justice of the Peace ceremony to sign a marriage license when you get home. Maybe just have parents present.

Good luck!

We totally looked at doing a destination wedding on a cruise ship lol. We would've gotten a symbolic ceremony there and done a legal ceremony back at home - just going to city hall and signing the paperwork essentially. That way, we would have been legally married but it wouldn't have felt like a wedding until the destination/symbolic one.

In the end, we ended up not doing a destination wedding because some of our key guests would not be able to go and we would be missing parts of our wedding party. So we decided to keep it in Canada. But I think the symbolic ceremony wouldn't feel fake especially if you just did a courthouse/city hall marriage with just the paperwork, then have the symbolic ceremony feel like the real thing (minus paper work).