Nikah is not legally binding in usa/canada, there are no legal benefits of it. All of the muslim weddings i've attended (much less strict sounding than OPs situation) they do it all together. A big mixed muslim/white dress wedding. I think it's fine doing it apart though.
I just... there's still a disconnect here. Clearly, you considered this religious marriage as a courtship. You now want to become legally married. All well and good.
However, the question you haven't directly answered is - do your friends and family consider you married? That shapes how they view this legal wedding, and would be the main reason for doing it or not doing it with all of them.
I just... there's still a disconnect here. Clearly, you considered this religious marriage as a courtship. You now want to become legally married. All well and good.
However, the question you haven't directly answered is - do your friends and family consider you married? That shapes how they view this legal wedding, and would be the main reason for doing it or not doing it with all of them.
She did say that her family does not consider her married and wants her to have this wedding. It's somewhere on the other page and I'm too lazy to go back and find it.
I stand by my original opinion... it sounds like you considered the Nikkah the beginning of your courtship, and have now decided to get legally married according to American tradition. As long as your family does not consider this to be offensive/trivializing your Nikkah, I wouldn't either.
I just... there's still a disconnect here. Clearly, you considered this religious marriage as a courtship. You now want to become legally married. All well and good.
However, the question you haven't directly answered is - do your friends and family consider you married? That shapes how they view this legal wedding, and would be the main reason for doing it or not doing it with all of them.
She did say that her family does not consider her married and wants her to have this wedding. It's somewhere on the other page and I'm too lazy to go back and find it.
I stand by my original opinion... it sounds like you considered the Nikkah the beginning of your courtship, and have now decided to get legally married according to American tradition. As long as your family does not consider this to be offensive/trivializing your Nikkah, I wouldn't either.
I figured as much from when she said they also wanted the big American wedding, but I wanted to be sure. And yes, the bolded.
To answer some questions - as I was away at work - I don't think doing so would be a slap in the face of any muslims - some choose never to do the legal marriage and MANY muslims get religiously married before the wedding so they can actually hold hands at the wedding and kiss and every thing like that.
In my religion there is no - if you want to date give up your religion. We cannot interact on our own until we get married. Also we were not living in a state that recognizes common-law so we are not considered common law married. My entire family wants me to have the big white wedding. Again, my Nikkah was my religious permission to be together in any capacity with my guy.
And simply because many muslims didn't follow the no interaction between men and women rules, it doesn't mean that all of us are willing to do that. That being said, if I married (religiously) him to be able to interact with him why would I immediately legally marry him if our religious marriage was the first time we were able to interact without an audience?
That said, our community knows were religiously married, but also knows that we are having a wedding later - that isn't tied to religion. Beyond that my family - who isn't Muslim - does not recognize my marriage at all because it isn't legal.
In addition to that, In my religion the marriage is performed first and then as much as days to months later, a big feast (Walimah) is held.
It sounds like you are going to have the big white civil wedding no matter what. Why are you waiting 2 years in between your Nikah and your civil marriage? Are you not going to use each other's insurance? How are you doing your taxes?
I guess what I don't understand is, if you are so religious and your community will shun you if you even talked to your husband (again, I have many very observant hijabi freinds that would consider this fairly extreme), wouldn't this same community shun a big Western-style white wedding? Won't this have men and women interacting together?
This just seems like you want a big American-style wedding day AND a religious Nikah, which isn't bad per se, but I think it is fairly silly to wait 2 years in between them.
I have been to many Muslim weddings (which I know are incredibly diverse, but I have been to weddings in the UAE, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and here in the UK) that include huge celebrations, but never 2 years after the fact. Where they needed legal documentation, they always figured out a way to include the civil side with the religious. This is like having a Catholic Mass, and then a big white civil wedding 2 years later after living as Husband and Wife. I don't understand the delay...
It sounds to me as if the Nikkah was required before hand just to determine if they wanted to get legally married. Essentially a two-year courtship. That doesn't seem excessive.
I have a couple of Muslim friends, and this is more or less how it was explained to me too. I'm sure culturally it varies a lot, but I know this is how it's treated by some groups.
I am so confused. I have never gone to a Nikkah before, but am attending one this summer. They are having a Nikkah and then will sign their license afterwards just like every other religious ceremony ever. I mean if you have a Catholic wedding but do not sign the license afterwards then isn't it pretty much the same thing as this? I'm not sure this is necessarily bad etiquette, but it's just strange? I think If I were on the invite list and knew you had a Nikkah already TWO WHOLE YEARS prior I would be really confused. A Nikkah is a wedding. I could be just enormously ignorant, but every time I have seen pictures or heard about this ceremony it doesn't sound any different than any other religious ceremony. If you decided at this point you didn't want to be married to him would you have to do something to have that recognized by the church? Was the Nikkah binding in your heart? Do you feel you became husband and wife two years ago? If so, then I'm not sure I understand the big white dress wedding. It's unfortunate that your family does not respect your religion. Are they wanting you to do a Christian ceremony? When you say a Nikkah just begins courtship - that to me would indicate you were just dating. That he was your boyfriend, not your husband. If you feel he is your true husband then why do you need an other ceremony (which, the ceremony in an of itself is not legally binding - only the license is binding and does not need any ceremony for) to solidify that? Sorry if this is all word salad. I'm just trying to figure this out.
To throw my two cents in here -- the two times that I've seen this happen (both in the Bengali Muslim community which in my experience is fairly liberal and also influenced by Indian traditions), the nikkah was done separately, before (though def. not two years before) the western style wedding and was more in context of an engagement announcement/family joining together than marriage vows. I can't really think of a western equivalent to the nikkah, to be honest!
My FMIL tried to talk us into doing this as well, but we said no as neither of us are religious (and neither is she unless it suits her), but it was definitely presented to me as more of an engagement/planning to be married thing and not a replacement of a vow exchange or license signing, which is not something they really have from the Islamic perspective.
As to whether it's a PPD - if you've been living and putting yourself out there socially as "husband and wife" rather than "engaged to be wed", then I'd side eye it a bit, even though I know a nikkah is different from a wedding ceremony. If you believe the nikkah is sufficient religiously to be wed, and socially/religiously (in this case it appears to be one and the same) you are considered wed, a western wedding seems a bit much. YMMV though!
One more question, do you live with your husband now?
I still don't know how I feel about this, but I guess honesty is the best policy. As long as everyone you invite to the legal wedding knows that the Nikkah happened already, I don't see how you can go wrong from an etiquette standpoint.
I do still think it seems a little disingenuous to get religiously married so that you can date/court your spouse, but maybe I'm not understanding the Nikkah as a wedding.
One more question, do you live with your husband now?
I still don't know how I feel about this, but I guess honesty is the best policy. As long as everyone you invite to the legal wedding knows that the Nikkah happened already, I don't see how you can go wrong from an etiquette standpoint.
I do still think it seems a little disingenuous to get religiously married so that you can date/court your spouse, but maybe I'm not understanding the Nikkah as a wedding.
According to the OP's religion and culture, there is a very specific code regarding the way males and females interact and she and her SO would not be able to interact unless they were married via Nikkah. I don't know the specifics of what the OP follows, but imagine trying to date someone without being able to talk to them.
One more question, do you live with your husband now?
I still don't know how I feel about this, but I guess honesty is the best policy. As long as everyone you invite to the legal wedding knows that the Nikkah happened already, I don't see how you can go wrong from an etiquette standpoint.
I do still think it seems a little disingenuous to get religiously married so that you can date/court your spouse, but maybe I'm not understanding the Nikkah as a wedding.
According to the OP's religion and culture, there is a very specific code regarding the way males and females interact and she and her SO would not be able to interact unless they were married via Nikkah. I don't know the specifics of what the OP follows, but imagine trying to date someone without being able to talk to them.
I understand that they can't interact. I personally couldn't imagine marrying a virtual stranger because I grew up in mainstream western culture and I have completely different values regarding gender, marriage and dating.
The part I don't get is saying "yes, this is my religion, and I subscribe to the teachings that a man and a woman should not interact in this manner without being married, so I'm going to marry this guy. But I don't want to commit to him until I've gotten a chance to date him in the western tradition that's not permitted by my religion, so I might or might not really marry him later."
Unless that's really what a Nikkah is supposed to be (which I don't think is the case) it just doesn't seem like that's how the Nikkah should be treated.
One more question, do you live with your husband now?
I still don't know how I feel about this, but I guess honesty is the best policy. As long as everyone you invite to the legal wedding knows that the Nikkah happened already, I don't see how you can go wrong from an etiquette standpoint.
I do still think it seems a little disingenuous to get religiously married so that you can date/court your spouse, but maybe I'm not understanding the Nikkah as a wedding.
According to the OP's religion and culture, there is a very specific code regarding the way males and females interact and she and her SO would not be able to interact unless they were married via Nikkah. I don't know the specifics of what the OP follows, but imagine trying to date someone without being able to talk to them.
I understand that they can't interact. I personally couldn't imagine marrying a virtual stranger because I grew up in mainstream western culture and I have completely different values regarding gender, marriage and dating.
The part I don't get is saying "yes, this is my religion, and I subscribe to the teachings that a man and a woman should not interact in this manner without being married, so I'm going to marry this guy. But I don't want to commit to him until I've gotten a chance to date him in the western tradition that's not permitted by my religion, so I might or might not really marry him later."
Unless that's really what a Nikkah is supposed to be (which I don't think is the case) it just doesn't seem like that's how the Nikkah should be treated.
Exactly my feeling. If you are so religiously devoted that you cannot hold a guys hand, then why would you take the ceremony as anything less than a life long commitment? I might be missing something, but this just doesn't seem consistent to me.
I ran this by my best friend who is a practicing muslim and she said she'd totally consider it a ppd since in Michigan at least, the Muslim ceremonies are just as binding as the Christian or Jewish ones (you just need to sign the license right after, same as we're doing at my Catholic ceremony). She's known people who've done it though as "trial marriages", which seems to be the same thing the op was doing here.
Not singing the marriage license after the nikah like you did would be the same thing as me having my Catholic ceremony and not signing the license after, and then 2 yrs later having another wedding where the license got signed. To me at least, its dishonest. If the religion I practice counts me as married, then I'm married and the license needs to be done asap. The honest thing would be to seperate yourself from the religion if you dont agree with the rules. Its tough to do since it involves family dynamics and your female, but I know so many muslim friends who have, and none seem to have regretted it.
It's not quite the same situation, but it does remind me a bit of that couple who got legally married so that they could date and see if they wanted to really be married (it was a visa issue), and then they were here a couple of years later wanting to have the BWW and "really" be married. Except I think they screwed up the legal marriage to stay in the country thing by not doing their research and one of them was kicked out of the country anyway. They were a hot mess if I ever saw one.
To answer some questions - as I was away at work - I don't think doing so would be a slap in the face of any muslims - some choose never to do the legal marriage and MANY muslims get religiously married before the wedding so they can actually hold hands at the wedding and kiss and every thing like that.
In my religion there is no - if you want to date give up your religion. We cannot interact on our own until we get married. Also we were not living in a state that recognizes common-law so we are not considered common law married. My entire family wants me to have the big white wedding. Again, my Nikkah was my religious permission to be together in any capacity with my guy.
And simply because many muslims didn't follow the no interaction between men and women rules, it doesn't mean that all of us are willing to do that. That being said, if I married (religiously) him to be able to interact with him why would I immediately legally marry him if our religious marriage was the first time we were able to interact without an audience?
That said, our community knows were religiously married, but also knows that we are having a wedding later - that isn't tied to religion. Beyond that my family - who isn't Muslim - does not recognize my marriage at all because it isn't legal.
In addition to that, In my religion the marriage is performed first and then as much as days to months later, a big feast (Walimah) is held.
According to the bold above, she says she is not legally married in her state and her family is non-Muslim and does not recognize her Nikkah as a marriage. And...she has made it clear that she is not waiting 2 years after the Nikkah to have a wedding. As long as she is honest about the whole thing I really don't see this as a big deal.
Meh, I have a dissenting opinion on this. I'll be honest, I think a big white wedding is AWish at this point.
A Nikah is not performed as a trial run in the Muslim religion. And I highly doubt your imam would have performed it if y'all told him you were just doing it to get to know each other more intimately or to court. A Nikah is a marriage.
In your religion and culture, you are married. In the eyes of your community, your family, your friends, you are married - husband and wife.
The only missing piece here is being legally married in the eyes of the government. You don't need to have a giant event and poofy white dress to get legally married. Lots of people don't. You can go down to the courthouse and do it in less than an hour.
What I'm getting out of this is that your family wants you to have a big event. Fine - go ahead and have a big event, but I would not have a giant Western style wedding when you have been considered married in your religion and culture for 2 years. Get a DJ, host some awesome catering, rent out a sweet venue.
At this point what you are saying is that because you had one ceremony which is not legally recognized you are going to have a second non legally binding ceremony. This makes no sense and is absolutely AWish. Like I said before, it sucks that your family does not respect your religion, but that doesn't mean having a second wedding ceremony is okay. My grandmother was pissed that my ceremony was not Catholic. I'm not going to go have a second ceremony that is Catholic to appease her.
This post is actually really bothering me and I am bummed that OP is MIA, and also that some PPs weren't more skeptical.
Re: Is it a second wedding?
Not singing the marriage license after the nikah like you did would be the same thing as me having my Catholic ceremony and not signing the license after, and then 2 yrs later having another wedding where the license got signed. To me at least, its dishonest. If the religion I practice counts me as married, then I'm married and the license needs to be done asap. The honest thing would be to seperate yourself from the religion if you dont agree with the rules. Its tough to do since it involves family dynamics and your female, but I know so many muslim friends who have, and none seem to have regretted it.
Well, according to her previous posts, she is not considered to be legally married in her state,
According to the bold above, she says she is not legally married in her state and her family is non-Muslim and does not recognize her Nikkah as a marriage. And...she has made it clear that she is not waiting 2 years after the Nikkah to have a wedding. As long as she is honest about the whole thing I really don't see this as a big deal.