Dear Knotties,
I have lingered on this board long enough to know that PPDs are a big no no, and I absolutely agree. But now newly engaged, I find myself in a bit of a pickle.
You see, my fiancé and I want to be married on a cruise ship from our home in Alaska to Vancouver. We have our hearts set on this. Upon more research, we discovered that because the particular cruise we picked doesn't cross international waters, they can't perform a legal ceremony on board. We don't like the idea of a harbour side or glacier wedding.
Is it still considered a PPD if we got the license the day before ( or day of) the cruise departing and have the ceremony we want on the ship?
We have no intentions of deceiving guests, we would tell them. I just don't think we should compromise our vision of a cruise wedding just to fit a minor technicality.
I suppose that as important as I recognize the license is, its real but not.... complete.
It's like legally we are united but not spiritually yet. I realize the legality is what so many battles are fought over in the course of history. I don't mean to trivialize it by any way.
My FMIL has shared her option that she isn't the biggest fan of that idea and it won't be a "real" wedding but will support whatever we choose. And everyone else thinks is the logical solution and are very happy.
Update: I want to sincerely thank everybody on this forum. You have all honestly pointed out some things to me that I had over looked and undervalued. We have talked about modifying our vision so that our guests can witness our true wedding in real time. So definitely no PPD!
2nd Update: I came here to seek advice about how to go about the whole PPD situation. You gave me great advice there, thank you. I have a much more realistic "vision". I really didn't ask about what you thought about the cruise wedding in itself because I know it's not everyones most affordable route and I didn't want to disclose our financial position. The reason we can have a cruise wedding is because my family (who is like 95% of the wedding guests) is pretty dang well of. That's why we can do it this way. Its also incredibly lucky that no one is forced to spend all their vacation time with us. They do not need to save up and can easily afford a cruise wedding because they brought it up in the first place as an idea. My best friend and one cousin (MOH and BM) who are the only ones that mentioned that they needed to save up, we are actually helping them compensate for a lot of their expense built into the wedding budget, that they don't even know about yet (Dress, tickets, staying with us before the cruise ect..) It will be very affordable. Absolutely not, will this be a financial burden to ANYBODY or put any of my guests in a financial hole. As for his family, granted he doesn't have as much family as I do but they also love the cruise wedding idea and can also easily afford it because they go on vacations all the time. We aren't asking them to help financially with any of the wedding and my father and generously accepted the full bill. No body DOESNT want us to have a cruise wedding. The only sticking point was If we were actually going to get married on the ship and we aren't anymore. Currently in the process of talking to coordinators about a very legal port wedding.
Never did I intend to come of as inconsiderate to my guests, I think I just mis communicated my full intent. I hope this clears up some stale air on this thread...