Well, my fiancée and I announced our engagement, set a date, and actually had a conversation with our families (separately) about how we were going to have our ceremony at the same place as our reception. Both my fiancée and I are atheists, but we both come from religious families. We're sensitive to the fact that our families would prefer for us to have a religious ceremony, but we see no point in having a religious ceremony as it would mean nothing to us - we're creating our own ceremony and a good friend will marry us. We want our ceremony to mean something special to US. All of this has been described countless times to family.
Anyway, my grandmother called me yesterday to inform me that she successfully reserved the family church for our wedding date and put down the deposit. . .thankfully I was busy, so I got the news on a voicemail.
I have no problem calling the church to cancel and explain there was a mistake. But does anybody have any suggestions on how to handle my sweet, but meddlesome grandma? She's in her 70s, does not have memory problems. . . given her personality, I'm thinking she's hoping we'll just go along with it. And yes, some of the conversations regarding the ceremony and the lack of religion have been with her directly.
I'll also add that she knows we're "not religious" but we haven't broken out the "A" word around her.