To be furious about my wedding

[Itsalltoomuch19]

So got married yesterday and want to point out it was amazing day full of the people I love and care about the most. But one thing caused me hours of stress and I think I should complain.
Our venue doesn’t have an actual marriage license so you get ‘married’ in a barn and I paid £500 for a celebrant to conduct the ceremony we met with her before and told her no one knew we were getting married a fews before and the people from the venue were coming to be witnesses so as no one felt they were not left out and both sets of parents had contributed a lot to this wedding so I didn’t want them being annoyed. An hour before I arrive my DH text me to say the celebrant has told his mum that we got married last week, he mum was upset and then asked my mum if she knew. I think she wanted to find out if my mum had been invited and not her, so now both sets of parents knew and were upset. This is all before I got there so I felt so upset and stressed by it as we didn’t want this to happen and she knew that.
Even the venue were limited and said they have never had a celebrant do this before and they have 3-5 weddings every week for the last 5 years! I really want to email her stating how stressed she made me feel and caused a bit of tension on the day but my DH thinks it’s done now we just need to face our parents today and explain the reasons and leave it

Surely the celebrant just forgot, they must do loads of weddings, how would they remember the specific dynamics of each couple? Unlikely they deliberately told your mum to ‘gossip’, why would they? And they haven’t breached confidentiality, that’s daft, marriages are a matter of public record, they don’t have a duty of confidentiality in that respect.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way you have done things, but I also think you should just write it off as an error. If it was so important that the marriage date was kept quiet then you should have made that very, very clear to the celebrant and probably reminded them again on the morning of your wedding/blessing. And even then I imagine they can’t lie if asked about it.

Just get on and enjoy your marriage, this is just a blip and makes no difference in the end.

It might be the day they consider as their wedding day

well yes, it is what they consider their wedding day and therefore people attended their wedding.

Nobody is saying it was the date they got legally married. But it was a wedding.

You should have told them and had them as witnesses. Especially as they contributed to your wedding. I can see why they are hurt

them saying they'll celebrate that date as their anniversary goes to show that they consider that their real wedding, and the legal bit just that.

So what date will they give on legal forms do you think? Banks, life insurance, passports, visas for travel, the birth of their kids etc. All of these have forms for marriage. What date do they use. The marriage or the barn dance?

@alsohuman again we have no idea whether the parents insisted on paying do we?

contributing to someones wedding doesn't mean you get to dictate what happens.

OP, your plan backfired, causing you distress and anger. The situation is of your making. Had the celebrant told you clearly that she could not keep the secret if asked, you would have been forewarned. I would assign no blame to her. She was put in an impossible situation. What should she have said to MIL once asked the question? If she had not answered but told MIL to ask you/your H, MIL would surely have pressed the point and the story might have come out anyway.

You could have told family members your plan or invited them to the first ceremony but whichever you chose, you would have been in control of the situation & no-one would have been in any doubt. Whether you send an official complaint or not, you will now have to build bridges with family members who feel aggrieved. I would concentrate on the latter and forget the former.

I make no comment about whether or not family members should or shouldn't feel upset. It was for you and your now H to plan your wedding arrangements (and having two ceremonies, the first of which married you plus a lovely celebration on another day is totally fine & much done these days) but it you were always on shaky ground to let your parents think they were paying for plan A when you had a plan B in place.

Use your energy in apologizing, explaining to your families and doing all you can to placate them, not in complaining about the celebrant. And of course, congratulations to you both (genuinely meant).

Then they should have paid for it themselves

Exactly if you want to get married and lie about it and then have a huge wedding celebration that's fine but don't take money from your parents and inlaws and then deprive them of actually seeing you get married.

"the people from the venue were coming to be witnesses so as no one felt they were not left out"
Dilemma:
Does one set of parents act as witnesses?
Do both fathers?
Both mothers?
Her mother and his father?
Her father and his mother?

Can't decide. Both sets have contributed to the reception and we don't want any of them to feel left out. Let's have 2 unrelated witnesses, that way no parents can moan that they were left out of being a witness.

Better still, why don't we not tell them about the marriage ceremony at all. If we don"t tell them then they won't know.

OP, it's done now. I'm glad you had an amazing day. Your parents probably enjoyed the day but it would have been somewhat dampened by finding out you actually got married a week/a few days before. I think that, for many parents, the legal ceremony is important. Perhaps you could get them together and explain your thought processes to them and hope they'll understand your reasons behind it?

They can call it what they like bonjour. It doesn’t make it a wedding. And the OP clearly thought it through enough to pretend to the parents it was something it wasn’t

Scottish obviously the legal date of the marriage, but the wedding took place on a separate date. Unless their parents routinely watch them filling in passport applications im not sure that makes a shit of difference!

well yes it was OPs wedding, not her parents. Her decision, not theirs.

I'm a celebrant and it is very common for people to do this openly - the legal part of the marriage is distinct from the ceremony, but the ceremony part is what matters to most couples. It's to do with legal restrictions on where and by whom an actual wedding can be performed.

However, you slightly put the celebrant on the spot by insisting on secrecy. It would have been better to make it clear to everyone that you were doing the legal bit the day before (we often announce this at the start of a ceremony, though with the couple's permission) and that you wanted their company at the wedding, which is the ceremony.

Bonjour it doesn’t make it a wedding the more times you write it!

It was a wedding celebration, a party, a knees up... but not the actual wedding.

I don't see you have done anything wrong - it was a practical choice so that you could have the venue you wanted. I don't see any problem with keeping it secret either. It is a shame that this happened. Hindsight is a great thing and I suppose it would have been better to explain it to everyone, but they should understand why you wanted to keep it quiet - because you considered it the day you were getting married in front of your familly and friends.

For 99% of people, the word wedding means the same as marriage ceremony. The legal bit.

What the OP had yesterday was a reception, with added bells and whistles.

Accio youre obviously very angry about this for whatever reason, but for OP it was the important bit. She wanted her parents to see what she considered the important bit, what she considered the wedding.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I cant imagine her parents would have been impressed at being at the reg office and told not to bother coming to the party because it wasn't a wedding. That was the bit they will have paid for after all.

I would be angry if my mum made my wedding about her.

Nope good try bonjour. Not angry in the slightest.
Just bemused by anyone thinking that doggedly repeating a word makes it true.

I don't understand this at all. Have a party/celebration afterwards but not sure it can be called a wedding. Just a sign of our times I think, most registry offices are small and pretty grim, beautiful licenced venues often cost arm and a leg. Maybe this is the work around to have the nice setting and lovely photos. I don't agree with lying to your parents/guests but each to their own. I would have been up front about it.

Did you get married at Skylark Golf and Country Club? In their barn? As we went to view there when choosing our venue, when the wedding coordinator dropped it on us that you don't ACTUALLY get married there I said nope not for us why pay £8000 + !!! To have a FAKE wedding ? Because that's what it is- fake. You get married the day before, strangest thing I've ever heard. But each to their own!
It was off that your celebrant told your parents but equally off that you were deceptive. Altho I can understand why because I wouldn't want my guests knowing they were attending a fake wedding either, as it's really odd!

And I completely agree that it’s up to an adult couple to have the kind of wedding, and wedding celebrations, that they want.

I just find it bizarre for adults to lie about it.

Acciowhat are you on about good try? you do seem angry that I don't agree with you.

I haven't said it makes it "true"

for op, that was her wedding, that was the important bit.

The date she will celebrate. alright, legally it wasn't a wedding, but for all intents and purposes its what op recognises as her wedding.

For 99% of people, the word wedding means the same as marriage ceremony

For 99% of MN users this is true. The wider population is probably a lot more relaxed about the use of the term wedding and what it covers. I'm not going to give myself a hernia if someone wants a party or ceremony and calls it a wedding even if they legal married at another place and date.

They paid for a wedding @Bonjourfreddie, that includes the important bit, the moment you become husband and wife. For whatever ridiculous reason, the couple decided to lie to the people who paid for it. You can protest all you like but that’s the bottom line.

its not really lying is it, they just didn't feel the need to announce that they signed a book a few days before, and this was a ceremony.

lets face it, nobody would have even known if the celebrant hadn't told people against ops wishes.

none of them would have been any the wiser.

What a shame this is marring the day after your wedding. Your MIL should have kept this knowledge to herself, until a much later date anyway.

You really shouldn’t have done it so secretly, water under the bridge now though, you can’t change it. You will just have to calmly explain yourself and wait for everyone to get over it.

Your MIL clearly asked a direct question of the celebrant, she couldn’t lie for you. Your MIL clearly suspected it wasn’t a legal ceremony. Although I would have thought it was fairly obvious if you didn’t actually sign any documents.

I’ve been to several weddings like this. Four off the top of my head where the wedding party was abroad so the legal part was done in the UK the week before. It can be a bit awkward because in each case a close circle of friends were invited to the legal part and then off to the pub for a drink while the rest of us were packing our suitcases to fly to some pointless far off destination just because the B&G fancied getting married in Italy or wherever.

Bitter, me? No.

Anyway, in each of those instances, the parents on both side were definitely in attendance at the legal part. I only know if one couple who got married all alone with stranger witnesses and no celebration party then phoned their families afterwards to say what they’d done.

Fireworks!