married in US with UK wedding question

To the ones that married in the US and then had a wedding later on in the UK. I know legally you can't get married twice but did any of you have a decent sized wedding or just made do with being eloped in the US?

We were set on doing the fiancee visa and having our wedding in the UK but we aren't liking being apart for so long and need to save a bit more money for our wedding. We are seriously considering when my boyfriend comes to the US to meet my family that we elope then and have our wedding later on. Just trying to figure out the best way to go about doing this, as techinically we would already be legally married.

Any personal experiences with having a UK wedding almost a year after getting married in the US? How did your family respond to it?

Have you ever heard of offbeat bride? What you are thinking of doing they call getting 'weddinged'. You might want to look at the blog posts they have about it to get an idea of how people do it and how their guests react.

I think it's a great idea, and especially since you might have guests coming from overseas I doubt imho that people will be that bothered if you wait a year or so for celebrations.

Depends on what your potential guests are like - some people might be inclined not to come to the wedding celebration of a couple that had already eloped, especially when there's international travel involved. 

You could always elope and not tell anyone - but make SURE he brings proof of his ties to UK and your plans to settle there etc. 

You could always elope and not tell anyone - but make SURE he brings proof of his ties to UK and your plans to settle there etc. 

We are considering that. We would tell our close family members though, they actually already know our potential plans. But how would we go about doing vows again and such? Or making it seem like an actual wedding...

I have known a few people to have two weddings.  The first was the legal one (obviously) and the second one was a "blessing" or a "hand fasting."  Both of the second wedding options were pretty wedding-y.  You can make it what you want.

So I finally read through some really old posts on here that had some similar questions as mine. I'm definitely not into lying about our marriage and keeping it from family. Like I said they already know our potential plans. We just wouldn't want the legal US wedding to be as big of deal as the one we hope to plan to have in England. Getting married in the US would help significantly financially and to get me to the UK sooner.

I have read about the Humanity weddings because we would want an outdoor wedding. There would be no religious ceremony that we would want to do. Do any of you think it is then possible for the second UK wedding to recite our own written vows for the ceremony and then reception after? As if it is a wedding but with no legal signing.

Ugghhh sorry for sounding repetitive and probably annoying. I'm just hoping that someone on here has done such a thing and said it was successful.   

It'd actually be really easy to have a UK "wedding" ceremony as you wouldn't have to worry about any of the legal stuff for it.  You could have it more or less anywhere and say whatever you want 

I found hitched.co.uk helpful in planning our wedding here, especially long distance with a few visits to see venue etc.

The only difference you need to have between your legal ceremony and the real* one is paperwork. If you wanted to get married in a church/temple/whatnot, you would need the priest/vicar/rabbi/community, but otherwise anything goes. Hire a humanist or get a friend to perform any sort of wedding you like, especially including the vows you want to share with each other.

I have read about the Humanity weddings because we would want an outdoor wedding. There would be no religious ceremony that we would want to do. Do any of you think it is then possible for the second UK wedding to recite our own written vows for the ceremony and then reception after? As if it is a wedding but with no legal signing.

Exactly this, except the "as if it's a wedding" part.  It is a wedding, you'll just have already signed the paperwork.

* perople use the term "real wedding" differently around here. Some people use it synonymously with "legal". I prefer to think that the "real" wedding is the one you'll celebrate as your anniversary, the one where you consider yourself properly wed. For me, that's when you stand up before your community (friends and/or family) and pledge your lives together.

DH and I celebrate two anniversaries.  One is the day we got married in the courthouse in San Diego with just my parents as witnesses, partially for visa purposes (it made it a LOT easier to just take my time), and one is the day we had a huge party with all of our friends and family to celebrate--which was officiated by a close friend of ours.  I loved both days.   And, I must add, it made me feel better when my mom was being particularly ridiculous to think that I was ALREADY married so whatever we were clashing over wasn't all that important.
Most of our friends knew, hardly any of the family did, and it has worked out really well.

Although not a US-UK wedding, I know someone else who celebrates two anniversaries.  The first is the day she and hubby exchanged vows at a county courthouse in CA where they live.  The second is the day after, when they got married at a Ren Faire wearing garb she had designed and made, with family and friends surrounding them.

Hiya, just thought i'd chime in here as I also had 1 legal ceremony, 1 wedding and now 2 anniversarys Similar to you we were going to do the fiance visa for DH and get married in the UK. I booked the wedding - church, reception, photographer, honeymoon etc Anyways, about 6 momths before the wedding we then decided that the spouse visa would be a much better option- being able to work and going on honeymoon and no extra visa!

So i flew with my parents to Orlando and we got married in the courthouse with just them and 2 friends present. Didnt change one single thing come the UK wedding day. I went down to see the vicar and he was more than happy to change our wedding ceremoney to a blessing ceremony. On the day itself you would hardly know anything was different - my dad still gave me away and we still said our vows in church - the vicar tweaked them slightly so they were more appropriate (i reaffirm this vow instead of i make this vow) We also exchanged new rings. The only thing we didnt do was sign the register as that part wasnt needed - we had the choir sing for us in that gap

So all in all we made a fantastic choice for us, my wedding day still felt completely like my wedding day and the same went for all the guests