Dear etiquette people,
My partner and I are getting married this summer after a very short engagement. We decided to push up our plans to get married due to my father's sudden and terminal illness. Because of this illness, we will be traveling out of state to Michigan (where my parents live) to get married.
Here's our problem: we are not religious and don't want to have a pastor or phony website stand-in as the person who marries us. We have a friend in Wisconsin who is a judge and we would love for him to marry us. But after multiple calls to Michigan authorities, they will not allow him to legally marry us in Michigan.
We were thinking about just signing the paperwork and say the necessary vows before the wedding to make it official, and see the wedding in Michigan as the real thing, but now I see a post about how terribly rude "re-dos" are. What should I do?