I am planning to do a private registry wedding with my partner this year and a full blown church wedding next year when we have more money. Does anyone know if you are already legally married if you will have to do any sort of paper work at a church wedding as well? :confused:

The first wedding is the legal one with the paper signing. The second one will be the religious one with no legal papers needed.

I don't understand why you are having two weddings. You can have a nice wedding without much money--often those are the best kind! What about announcements and for which wedding are gifts to be given? Will you tell people invited to the church wedding that you are already married?

The first will be your wedding, the second will be a blessing of the marriage, there is no paper work at the second one. The Pastor may have some church issued certificate, I know I give one out.

You will have to tell the pastor of course you are already married, and some have a special service for the blessing

It is really complicated... we have planned all along to have the big dream wedding next year. However me and my partner live in different countries. I had hoped to move over this year to live with him in canada but it was rejected. We have been told that we may need to push the wedding earlier so we can try again. The problem is we don't want to tell anyone about if we are forced to do a small registry one this year so I can join him in canada. So I was hoping next year when we do the church wedding it would just be like the first time we are getting married as most people would be assuming that. However it is appearing that it can not work like that. I am not sure what I am going to do now.

There is no reason you can't have two services, you do not sign the marriage license at the service anyway, you do that in the pastors study either before or afer the service ( I always do mine before just in case something would happen) It is the pastor signing the marriage license that actually makes you married.

But there is no reason you can not have a second service, now depending on the denomination, in the Catholic church, it has to be a blessing, since they would not do another "wedding" but some pastors may do any service you like.

Thank you so much for your help! :-):)