AIBU to marry secretly now and hold a wedding in 2028?

[Wededed]

We are just about to book a wedding venue. We were going to do next summer but are tempted to do 2028 as it gives us more time to save, and more time to fit in planning/ organising.

But this is two years away!!!

We are well overdue this wedding. We have been engaged for many years. I believe 6 or 7!!

With two young kids and assets now worth worrying about legally. Would it be unreasonable to go and get married secretly in private without telling anyone at a registry office.

We can then have the 2028 wedding as planned but if either of us gets hit by a bus in the meantime then we are legally covered.

One part of me thinks this is no big deal. It’s no different to 3/4 of the weddings I have been to where people are having destination weddings or celebrants weddings at unlicensed venues.

The only difference is the extensive time frame and we won’t be able to wear our rings or change our names without others knowing until after the 2028 date.

What do you think?

I personally don’t see it as a problem, a lot of people on here are mean about weddings.

Maybe you could be honest? Say you want the legal bit out of the way and you want to celebrate when you’ve saved. A lot of people would understand. Then you can probably save money by making it less “wedding” and more a party to celebrate

I wasn’t planning on counting from 1 anyway 😂 2028 will be a nice round number for us to count from.

you plan on counting from the 2nd anniversary of your marriage? This is getting stranger and stranger

Are you planning to lie to your family and the rest of the guests? Refuse to change your name or wear rings until the wedding in 2028?

If not, then your plan is very different to the OP's.

Has anyone suggested this?

Hooray you have found your perfect venue! Book the first date they have available. Tailor everything else to the budget you can save by that date.

(As a bonus, make the same savings plan as you would have had up to summer 2028. You now have nice savings that you have not splurged on a single day!)

Friends and family being there, if you want them, is the main thing. A nice location does make a difference. The quality of the food, the photos, all the other trinkets, really do not. As for dress you will never wear again.... hit vinted, move to the shopping topics here, you can find something similar to what you want for a bargain if you try. You're just as much a princess for a day on cheap bubbles as you are on premium champagne.

Why am I not allowed to be a princess! And why can’t we have a special day!

Of course you can. But you can’t have a cosplay wedding and make your family and friends unwittingly go along with it in the process.

I wonder if you could even find an officiant to do this TBH- they would have to word it very carefully I would imagine. And it’s just such nonsense “you may now kiss the bride… oh you have been doing that for the last 2 years”! Wouldn’t you feel completely embarrassed?

It’s the kids factor im curious about. You’ll have to tell them to not breathe a word about it.

Why would you put everyone to the expense and hassle of attending your wedding in a couple of years, just for them to find out that you are already married?

Have a quiet registry office do if you need to and say to people that you really couldn’t wait. It sounds like you want to protect yourselves but you also want the big wedding.

Wait a year have a smaller wedding. I would not save for two years to blow it in a party.

Just do the legal bit now and have a blessing/party later. Honestly it's just cringeworthy to lie about it.

Not always true
We were married abroad and are very much legally married in the eyes of the U.K. government

And to those saying the lie will continue, all the anniversaries etc. I wasn’t planning on counting from 1 anyway 😂 2028 will be a nice round number for us to count from.

Eh 🤯

And yes how are you planning to broach this with your kids? If you tell them I can’t see any way in which they won’t let the cat out of the bag before the CosWedding anyway.

That’s quite unusual though. Surely weddings are to witness a couple getting married and celebrating the day with them.

You can either get married and have a party further down the line or make your children lie for you just because you want the princess thing.

My kids will be too young to understand fully so that’s not a problem.

I would attend any number of wedding celebrations or parties. I'd understand if the couple had done the legal statements and paperwork 2 years earlier. I'd probably be moved by them exchanging rings for the first time and making public declarations and promises. I'd not care how long they'd lived together or whether they had children.

But I wouldn't expect any of my friends to lie to me about something like this. Nothing weird about that imo

Why bother with any celebration in 2 years time?! Just have a civil partnership ceremony this year and invite people to that.
Job done!

Yes you got it exactly!

It sounds like you want to protect yourselves but you also want the big wedding.

That is what I want!

And after this thread I think the best idea would be to not tell them! We aren’t going to lie and say we aren’t married. Just nonchalantly say ‘oh yes we have done the registry bit’.

At least be honest and tell that what you have done. That way you can walk around in your princess frock and know that the people who have had to go to the expense and inconvenience of attending at least know what’s happening

This is what my mother would say 😂

Most weddings are not weddings these days.

I very much doubt that.
To balance your own personal experience, I've been to quite a lot of weddings recently (2 more to come this Summer) and I've never been to a wedding that wasn't the actual wedding.

DD and her DH did the legal bit 2 weeks before what they view as their wedding ( and all the guests saw it that way as well). The registrar obviously did the formal bit and 2 weeks later they had a celebrant and no registrar. DD got walked down the aisle, they exchanged vows ( the only things they said on the formal day was what they legally had to say and no rings were exchanged), and everything else that happens at a "traditional" wedding but they could say exactly what they wanted with no restrictions.

If you've got that from the responses on the thread, then you're clearly just determined to carry on with your original plan.

Most posters have been very clear in saying that they would happily attend a party at a later date to help you celebrate, the part which would bother them would be the secrecy and lying.

We're millennials & got married when the kids were tiny & we had very little money, some very tricky relatives, & were still renting. Better to have everyone together, wear a gorgeous wedding dress & have a smaller wedding than to get hung up on a particular place in a couple of years time, when it honestly sounds very difficult to keep this lie under wraps & may cause upset, when you are trying to avoid arguments with family anyway?

Why does it have to be secret? Get married now and have your wedding in 2028 but just be honest about it. You won’t be able to hide it anyway, it will be obvious it’s not a “real” wedding as there are certain words and processes you have to follow and you won’t be able to do it twice. People don’t take kindly to being lied to.

As you seem to be pretty insistent on sticking to your secret wedding idea, do you want to think through how that would work on the day of the public one? You would do some sort of ceremony, presumably. You can't do a legally valid one if you're already married. Some of your guests will likely know how to tell the difference (eg no signing of register). What are you going to tell them?

I agree with marrying now, and a small wedding. Just don't keep it a secret, and say you wanted a celebration when the children are older, say after a given period of years.