To not take leave on the day we marry?

[Aashni]

DP and I get married next month. It’s a large event with many guests, but the religious ceremony isn't legally binding.
Because of this, DP and I are heading to our local registry office next week to do the legal part of the marriage. We don’t want this formality to overshadow our wedding next month, which we consider the actual day we marry. So, for the registry wedding, we aren’t having guests (just two acquaintances as witnesses), no vows or ring exchange, and we’d planned to work that day as usual (it’s over lunchtime).

When sharing our plans with friends and family, we’re told we’re crazy for not taking the day off to celebrate together. But to me, this day is merely a legal formality. DM insists it will be a special and emotional day regardless, and that it would be silly not to acknowledge it as we’ll never get that day back. WWYD?

Why bother typing a thread about it at all? Nobody would comment or offer any opinion if they hadn't...

The only 'bossy' one is you, trying to police the thread when OP did actually ask, WWYD? It's right there in her first post.

I took the morning off work (couldn’t book a lunchtime ceremony) and went back to work in the afternoon. We did go for brunch immediately afterwards, which was nice, but if I were you I’d stick with your original plan.

You seem rather uneducated as to how marriages work in other cultures. Doing things slightly differently to what you consider the norm doesn’t make it “odd”. Hindu ceremonies are long in duration and it is neither practical or commonplace to have both the religious ceremony and then a registry ceremony on the same day. Its perfectly normal to do the two on different days.

It's completely up to you. For many people, myself included, the legal but was just paperwork and we didn't 'feel' married until we had our official celebration and wanted to wait for our ceremony to celebrate. It seemed like it would make the later ceremony feel like a bit of a farce if we had already celebrated

The legal bit makes you married, the other bit is just a very expensive party.

My friends did this and consider the date they had their humanist ceremony surrounded by friends and family as their “real” wedding date. The day they signed the contract is just that.

Couldn’t have put it better myself!

A friend of mine did this.
She literally got married during her lunch hour.
( they didn’t have another big wedding / celebration on another day either )

I thought it was unusual but each to their own.

You want to feel your religious ceremony is the big day for you. Your moment to get married. A celebration of the registry wedding might mar that. I get it.

I would advise taking the afternoon off and going out for lunch together to celebrate, your wedding celebration day will be AMAZING, but you don't get chance to spend real quality time enjoying it with your husband as there are so many people, I think it will be lovely for the two of you to have a small celebration of your marriage just the two of you.

I would take the day or at least the afternoon off and have a lovely lunch just the two of you.

My parents had a witnesses only wedding, my GMother and a passerby (as the main event) and went to Woolies to get their wedding photos in a photo booth and then had lunch in the pub next door. They've been married 40 years so it's not the size or expense of the wedding that counts, not that that applies to you as you are having a lovely big do too but Id still aim to make the day itself memorable and mark it somehow.

Thank you everyone, this has been really helpful. On reflection, DP and I are going to book the day off after all and have a nice lunch just the two of us!

You said it yourself, its the day you get married, answers in the question imho

Sometimes you need to trust the wisdom of people who have experienced what you haven't, even if you wouldn't normally just do what your DM said.

Even if you think it's just a formality I think you will be glad you took some time out, just the two of you. And if you don't, you've not lost much.

Some of our best photos with the kids are of us all crammed into a photo booth.
Wish I’d thought of that for our wedding!

Take the day off. The day of the wedding will be chaos and hard work. This is an opportunity for you two to take some time together and celebrate. And you will likely be a lot more emotional about it than you expect.

You only get these opportunities once, the whole point of getting married is love and celebration.

As a side note, this is how people do it in most European countries where no religious ceremony is binding. So people have a small town hall ceremony followed by the big wedding.

The day you actually sign the legal documents is your wedding day. So yes, very odd.
I can't understand why you're not signing the documents the day you've planned the wedding. For me, it would spoil it.

This sounds perfect, me and DH did similar :) We actually weren't planning on it, but once we'd done the registry office formalities it just seemed like such a nice opportunity to celebrate just the 2 of us without the chaos of the day. Nothing fancy, it didn't detract from the wedding day itself, nor was it a big deal really, but it was lovely.

My mother was a Registrar. She married many people on a Friday afternoon ahead of their ' big do' the next day.They would come in in jeans expecting it to be a bit of nothing . She said you could see the penny drop once the process started that this was their actual wedding day and there were always tears.They day you go to the registry office is the legal date of your marriage. The big dress and party are flummery that you are absolutely free to have but from the minute you leave that office on that Friday you are husband and wife. You can do exactly as you wish with all of it but, whether you like it or not, the lunchtime ' quick thing' is your wedding day.

Perhaps for you, for many there's a distinction between the legal process of marriage and the ceremony itself. Whichever you class as the anniversary you choose to celebrate is fine.

We did our religious wedding and civil wedding together (I didn't know you could do it another way in the UK) but if we would have done it seperately I wouldn't have considered it a special day, just paperwork. The religious ceremony would be the more meaningful one for me.

Who cares what your friends think, take the day off if you want to, but if you would rather save your time off for something else, do that.

Lots of people get married in a Registry office with very little fuss, so there’s no obligation to do anything special if you don’t want to, and especially as you’re planning to hold a religious ceremony at a later date.

My son and DIL did something similar back in her home country where they signed the paperwork in a council type building but held their wedding party several days later with family and friends.

At the wedding party we all got dressed up and the bride wore a fabulous traditional bridal costume that she had to be helped into, as a compromise to her mum as she’s dropped her religion completely and was adamant she was not getting married in a religious ceremony.

It was quite funny because as soon as all the wedding photos were completed, she changed back into jeans and a T shirt for the actual wedding meal and the rest of us were still dressed up. 😂

But presumably in India, for example, the religious marriage is the legal one. I support Hindu temples etc being licensed for marriage and priests/imams being licensed also. It would have the wholly welcome effect of outlawing multiple marriages in some cultures now resident in the UK - because under UK marriage laws only serial monogamy (i.e. one marriage dissolved before a second takes place) is legal.
NB I don't think a legal marriage followed by a religious marriage odd at all (I know, not directed at me) - and this is the case in e.g. France. (On the other hand in the UK the CofE (or Churches of Scotland/Wales etc) is required to hatch, match and despatch all citizens who wish to use its services. Whether a religious or a civil marriage makes no difference to the legality of the union as long as whichever it is, it is carried out in place licenced for marriage by a celebrant licenced to marry - which can be e.g. a synagogue and rabbi, a Catholic church and priest, a Methodist church and minister as well as the registry office or parish church.)

Gosh, some people really are so keen to just suck the joy out of everything. Use a days leave and spend it with your new husband.

Personally, I would take the day off and go for a lunch with my DP as a couple afterwards - not necessarily anything fancy, just a nice afternoon together. But we both love any excuse for an afternoon off and a nice lunch, to be fair! Honestly, you don't have to listen to anyone else about this. It's your marriage and your choice, and if the legal element of your marriage is literally just paperwork to you because the religious ceremony is your 'real' wedding, that's absolutely fine. And I guess it will also mean you have an extra day's annual leave to use on your honeymoon!

DH's brother and SIL did the whole it's just a piece of paper, the party in a couple of weeks is the wedding. But very much when they did the paperwork it actually felt much more than that