Hi, I'm new here. FI and I are in our 50's, and we have both been married before. We've been engaged for a year and are anxious to get married. We are also buying a house together.
Here's the problem - as part of the divorce settlement with my ex-husband, I was awarded a portion of his pension payments for the rest of my life. However, I lose those payments if I remarry before a certain age. It's a quite significant amount of money, and I don't have very lucrative job skills because I was primarily a stay-at-home mom for most of the marriage.
Originally, FI and I planned to live together now and get married in 6 years when I reach that certain age. We are deeply committed to each other and don't feel we need a piece of paper from the government to prove it. We will set up wills, powers of attorney, living together agreements, etc., to create and protect our financial and legal interests.
We are both religious and very involved in our church. When we do have our wedding, we want it to be a joyous celebration in our church sanctuary, and the guests will mostly be our church community. I'm fine with waiting 6 years for that.
Recently, however, FI decided he wants to have a ceremony much sooner, to make our vows before God and each other, and to affirm to our church community that we are indeed a committed couple for life.
So we are pondering having of a commitment ceremony now (and a courthouse wedding to make it a legal marriage at the appropriate time in the future). Our commitment ceremony would be very similar to a wedding (minus "by the power invested in me by the state of blah, I now pronounce you husband and wife"). We have explained our situation to several clergypeople who know us well. They all think that, given our circumstances, a commitment ceremony is totally appropriate. However, they are either unwilling or unable to get permission from their denominations to perform such a commitment ceremony. So we would have to find another officiant or another denomination, or get a friend to perform the ceremony, or just do it ourselves. We might also have to have the ceremony in a non-church venue.
I'm also concerned about how a commitment ceremony would be received in the conservative small town where we will be living. Even if I write up something to include with the invitation, I don't think most of the guests would know what to make of it. I don't want to be accused of having a "fake wedding" or a "gift grab" (we surely don't need more STUFF!).
As FI and I researched the history of marriage licenses and marriage in the Bible, we came to believe that religious marriage and legal marriage really are two separate contracts. One is between the couple and God, and the other is between the couple and the state. In some countries, such as Mexico, that is how weddings are done - you can have a religious wedding or a courthouse wedding, or both. I even thought about eloping to Mexico for the religious ceremony only, but then our guests couldn't be there with us.
So - if you got our commitment ceremony invitation in the mail, what would you think, and how would you respond? I'd hate to throw a party and have nobody show up!