I know there are plenty of us out there that for some reason or another (military, money, time, etc) are having to do a courthouse wedding and then have the wedding of our dreams later on, and I am one of those girls, thanks to the Army and money restraints we are haveing getting married in a courthouse with the JP at the end of July and then having a BBQ for my dad and maybe 4 of our friends, we are also planning on making up for this by having our "REAL" wedding on our 1 year anniversary, What has been pis**ing me off is that every time I see a post on here from someone like me who is also doing this, The post gets flooded with "Well it's not a real wedding , It's a Vow-Renewal. I understand we will be pledging our love and exchanging vows twice but if you would stop and think about it, the first (Courthouse wedding) is only exchanging vows to a JP (not preacher) and it is for the most part just the legal part of getting married then the second (real wedding) will be in front of all our family & friends and a preacher in front of god and will be basically as my grandma put it (being married in the eyes of god). if we have dreamed of the 'white dress wedding" and for some reason we have to settle and do our vows in a courthouse but are still planning on doing the vows again and then the same reception that every other bride is doing then It should count as our "real wedding" I know alot of people will disagree with me but why take the excitement out of someone's wedding planning by saying "it's not a wedding, sorry" ? I understand that you are suppose to be single, not married in order to have a "wedding' but why can't people just answer whatever question the poster is asking and not point that out?