Anyone with two wedding anniversaries?

[Catchytune]

Can anyone help with how having two wedding anniversary dates works for them? The marriages with a small registry office and then a big wedding later or getting married abroad where you need a legal ceremony before the wedding.
I know MN hate the idea but people still have them. With the benefit of hindsight which one have you ended up calling your anniversary please?

My BIL and SIL had two weddings. They live in Germany but legally got married in England and had their big wedding 3 months later in Germany. For some reason it was easier to get legally married in England. They consider the big wedding their 'proper' wedding and celebrate that more.

We got officially married on 23rd August but the date we count is the 26th, as that’s when we had our “big” wedding, it’s the date on the invites and the date that our families were there to celebrate with us. You celebrate a baby’s birthday on the day they were born, not the day you register their birth and that’s how we made sense of it all

The legal one! Not the blessing a week later.

My son and his wife have. Registry office wedding in Aus, overseas one a month later. They consider the overseas one - full wedding dress, lots of guests etc. - their "proper" wedding so celebrate that date as their anniversary.

Surely it's the one when you were legally married? That only happens once and you only have one anniversary.

By law the first one when you actually married, any subsequent event is just a party not a wedding.

My husband and I got married in a very small ceremony in a registry office one day and had a church blessing and reception with lots of guests the following day.

I think of the second day as the important day, but we nevertheless count the first date as our anniversary. The two dates are only a day apart so it doesn't much matter.

I wondered on people’s experiences over time really.

Like buying a house. Do you feel the day the sale goes through or the day you move in is the date you owned your home?

Surely overwhelmingly people move on sale day

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

By law the first one when you actually married, any subsequent event is just a party not a wedding.

With respect I just wanted experiences from people that have done weddings that way.

Like I said, I know MN doesn’t see the point.

Our church wedding was the 'real' wedding to us, the one where we considered ourselves married, so that's the anniversary we celebrate even though it wasn't the legally binding one. The registry office anniversary, which is a fair bit earlier, is always remarked on but not marked with a card, gift or special date night.

This is a bit complicated but - when we were getting married our church was in the process of moving buildings. When that happens, the registration can be moved too, but there is is period during changeover when neither place is registered and they can't guarantee a date by which the change will be completed. So the old building remained the registered venue. We got legally married in the office there with just people to sign the register, and the next day had what was to all intents and purposes a marriage ceremony and reception in the new church building.

We didn't live together until after the second 'wedding', so that was the start of married life for us.

We never really bother celebrating it so it doesn't come up much!

Whichever one you want really, if it was me i'd celebrate the first one as the second one is just for show really.

The special part is actually getting married I suppose.

With that said I only had one small and not very weddingy wedding (the show part is not my thing at all!) and we don't really acknowledge anniversaries anyway - mainly because we can never agree which date it actually was 🤣

We had a legal, and lovely wedding with the two of us and two witnesses in Scotland. Three weeks later we had a church blessing and full reception. I would have liked a church wedding but my DH's marital history was rather chequered and I didn't even ask my vicar!
Actually we don't celebrate it that much but the first is the date we married.

The legal one. Nothing wrong with having a party at a later date, but having an anniversary of a party is a bit odd.

We tend to count the party as the anniversary for ourselves and talking to friends (if wedding anniversaries ever came up in conversation). We got legally married the day before though so there's not much in it.

We got married in a private chapel where you can't sign the register. We'd arranged the wedding there before there register issue became apparent so we just needed to deal quickly with the legal bit.

We had a legal marriage in the town hall then a party 3 months later. Then date we celebrate for our anniversary is the first one, though we don't really go big on celebrations.

I am German and you have to have a legal register office wedding first before you can get married in a church/humanist wedding.

Most people with church weddings/humanist ones do count that one as their actual wedding, the legal one is a paper signing exercise as it is more in line with their believes.

So in my opinion it depends why you have to dates. A pure party is not a wedding anniversary but if you need a legal one but your heart is set to a specific ceremony that I think it is fully ok to see this as your wedding.

My parents have two dates and to make it even more complicated, there is a full year between them, they got married so my dad could apply for a transfer with the armed forces but back in the Sixties lot of people didn't acknoweldge the registar wedding as the real one and you had to battle to get housing.

Legal one. We still mark our "getting together" anniversary though, that would mean more to me than the party anniversary.

As for buying a house, I can't say that's an anniversary we celebrate?! Just remember.

@notheragain4 How funny, DH and I still celebrate our anniversary of meeting too - it was 31 years this year. Everyone we know think we are really strange to celebrate this as well as our wedding anniversary.

I have three but seeing as how the first ended in a messy divorce, I’ll discount that.
Although I did get a pang that this year should’ve been my 45th and it was just a few days before celebrating my 5th, which was a couple of months after my second wedding.

My first second wedding was in a registry office and our second wedding was on a beach with 25 guests and family, so that’s the one we take as the official one.

It’s very complicated isn’t it?

I’ve also bought ( and kept ) 5 wedding dresses and only worn three of them.

We had two weddings. I wanted a religious ceremony but the religion I belong to isn’t officially recognised for the purpose of marriage in the UK, so we needed a registry office wedding to make it legal. Our ‘real’ wedding and the one we celebrate is the religious one that we invited all our family and friends to, and that would be the same for all members of my religion here.

Thanks everyone.

Still got the usual comments from people that only had ONE wedding. Hopefully they read the comment s and realise that there are many reasons for a second wedding rather than just wanting a “show off” party.

I think most seem to celebrate the wedding they consider their wedding regardless of when they signed the papers. It wasn’t what I expected actually so it was a good question to ask.