Did anyone else get married in a private ceremony then have an actual wedding later? Or anyone planning to do that? We already got married just the two of us and our daughter last November because of his deployment. He hadn't even been home for a year and they were shipping him off again. He won't be back until spring next year so that is when we are planning on having our wedding? Does anyone else do that?

We definitely talked about it, as my fh is currently deployed.  We knew with his deployment that we were going to have a 19 month engagement with the date we chose.  I think I was actually more okay with it than he was.  He didn't want two "wedding dates."  I know a lot of people who have done it, whether it was to get info during deployment or for reasons of family/children/living arrangements.  I think it's one of those things that each individual couple in our situation just needs to decide what's right for them.  :)

We're doing this! We got engaged October of 2008 and planned a wedding for October 2009. We got word he would be deploying late summer in March 2009. So we planned a quick beach wedding right before he left, and now our "big" wedding is October of this year! :) I DEFINITELY did not want to do this, I also didn't want "two wedding dates", and I didn't want to just go to the courthouse, so we did an actual ceremony and everything...but I always refer to our October wedding as the "real" wedding.

we did! we went to the JOP and then had our wedding on 4/10/10. We are going to recognize our 4/10/10 wedding date as our anniversary since that's the one where we pledged ourselve to eachother in front of God and our friends and families.

Well I think we have managed to make it work out even better then we planned. It just happens that he will be home on R&R for our one year anny. We decided that we will be spending his two week R&R in Daytona/Ormond Beach Florida. We are going to take our then four year old to Disney and Seaworld and we are going to have a small simple ceremony on the beach right outside our condo! Im so excited. I love this plan so much better and we will still only have one date!

Just an update! A little late I know but I only just now got our wedding photos (that was a nitemare! but more on that later) Here are a few of our pics from our 2nd Wedding Day :)