Small Ceremony, with celebration later

Why dont you do the actual ceremony on the june date and have only the reception on the aug date?

Instead of it being a “fake ceremony” why don’t you have it be a vow renewal?

Your day will be special as getting the go ahead is fantastic news. The latter part of the reception is a great idea for celebration with all your loved ones around you. The one change I would make is calling it a Vow Renewal than going for a "fake" wedding (though technically it is).

We are doing something similar. Our wedding was scheduled for August 15th. We decided to postpone our celebration until August 14, 2021 but we are still getting married this year.


We decided that to make our celebration next year just as special, I bought a simple wedding gown online and he is buying a different suit. For this ceremony we will be writing our own vows and next year we will have it blessed in the church with the rest of our family and friends. Both ceremonies will be completely different so they will be special in their own way.

Hi, there! Firstly, I am so sorry you’re going through this.


My (now) husband and I did just this. Our original date was for the 29th of August, 2020. After looking into commissioners, we decided that having our mutual friend “marry” us on our wedding date is the way we wanted to go. Knowing this, we then booked an officiant for the first weekend of April so that my parents could fly in and we would have a very small and intimate celebration in secret with our parents and siblings. Fast forward a month or so and COVID-19 happened.
Our commissioner emailed us a few weeks prior to our 4th of April ceremony noting that only two witnesses could be in attendance as a safety measure. We then found out that my parents couldn’t fly in. We did get married on the 26th of March and have kept it a secret from all the guests minus the original group who were going to be at the legal ceremony. One thing we kept differently from the legal ceremony and what will be our “actual” wedding is our vows. We didn’t exchange our custom vows to keep the wedding special - we did exchange rings and a very simple vow as it’s part of the law in the legal ceremony.
Our wedding has now been postponed to September 2021 and we are on the fence about telling our guests we got hitched legally back in March. We are still walking down the isle, having a first-look, having our friend “marry” us, exchanging rings, exchanging vows, and everything like a normal wedding. We will just have had the legal bits done ahead of time - just like people do when they get married overseas, say in Mexico for example.
Either way, we will be celebrating the legal day each year together as our marriage anniversary and the new date in September as our wedding anniversary. We only have one life, so might as well enjoy it all.

I think both days can be special if you make them or let them be special. If you want it to be special you can find ways to include friends and family, maybe with readings and you can still have someone walk you down the aisle and it could be someone different from the first ceremony. You can still do anything from the wedding you want, and skip what you don't want.


Our plan is to elope on our date, which doesn't have a significance, and to have our celebration on our first anniversary in 2021. If we elope it will be only with the legally necessary people, so I'm sure that the party will be important to our parents. We will do a vow renewal for them, and keep some of the speeches, the first dance etc. I like the idea of having the party start the day before our anniversary and having a countdown at midnight to our anniversary.

My fiancé and I recently had a small ceremony with our witnesses, minister, parents from a distance and some immediate family joining via video chat. Our original date was supposed to be May 23rd, however it wasn’t really of huge significance to us so we decided to do a small ceremony this past weekend, and postponed to August. That being said I don’t have my dress so I wasn’t able to wear it etc, I feel personally like our “fake” ceremony with family and friends will still be important to me and feel as special because we will be surrounded by those there to support us, I’ll be able to wear my dress, get my hair and makeup done, and essentially have the full bride experience which I didn’t get to have. My suggestion is maybe go through with the small ceremony in June since that day is of significance to you, wear a different dress (I myself just wore a white sundress I got for my shower that was postponed) etc, but still make it special. I feel personally like my fiancé and I lucked out as we will have not one but two special days to look back on and celebrate our wedding and love for eachother! Hope this helps! 😊