If it's not broken... would you bother getting married?

[Wiggy29]

Quite happy and settled in our relationship, one little bod and another on the way. We've had our fair share of ups and downs and I guess we've come to the point where it's naturally started being discussed. Here are the reasons for/ against in my mind:

For: I'm a bit old to be a 'girlfriend', love the idea of making the commitment to other half, ds would love it, better in terms of tax/ if one of you dies and all that boring practical stuff.

Against: hate the idea of spending a lot of money on one day (I know you don't have to but we have a v. large family/ friendship group so it would be either a case of excluding (and offending) or just going away etc and doing it (and offending). I hate being centre of attention so the idea of any form of ceremony holds no appeal at all.

I guess, in short, I love the idea of a marriage but not a wedding, but getting married without everyone there would cause such upset that I'm just not sure it's worth the bother.

Any opinions or anybody managed a happy medium?

[DeafLeopard]

Do you actually need to tell people that you are married?

You could just do the registry office thing to protect yourself legally and financially and view it as just that.

Like scaveola stated upthread, there are important legal differences between being married and co-habiting.

[GhettoPrincess]

I worked with someone years ago who got married as her boyfriend who was the father of her child was South African and she was European and his visa was about to expire. They didn't invite her religious, formal family to the ceremony and it was to far for his family to travel to Britain so they got married in a registry office and kept quiet about it. Her family sometimes jokingly refer to her boyfriend as her husband and she wonders if it's going to be like a film that the day she fesses up, her family will grin and say, 'we know'.

I remarked that they could never get married again. She said they could if they got divorced ! By implication, would they then get divorced just so they could invite their families to the wedding ceremony and pretend it was first time around ? It would be taken as read that the ceremony would take place in church ? That could entail complications if the church does not care to marry divorcees. However, a lot of venues can have weddings these days.

In your case, just popping along to the registry office might just work. The 'circus', not to mention marketing excercise that some wedding preparations turn into might turn out to be a total nightmare that you will regret. Weddings can bring out the beast in people (no, that's not a spelling error).