This is in follow-up to a question on another thread, where I said my FI and I are separating these two events by as much as a few months.
Jewishly, our Conservative rabbi has NO problem with it. My FI is a real stickler for Halacha, and had a long conversation with the rabbi before we agreed to do it this way. Many of our friends here in Seattle have separated their ceremonies for various reasons-- health insurance, marriage equality (wanting to marry legally in BC where gays and lesbians can marry) or whatever. We are going to separate the two by as much as 6 months for immigration reasons, we want to start the legal immigration process as soon as practical.
Our plan is to have just two, non-jewish, witnesses at the legal ceremony. My mom is a bit disappointed about this, but we really want to community to recognize the Ketubah ceremony, not the BC legal ceremony, as our wedding. Both ceremonies are important to us (to some extent the Jewish one is more meaningful to us than the civil one) so we have no problem having them a few months apart. We will recognize the Jewish ceremony date as our anniversary.