Int'l Married Couples-- Advice, Please!

DontMindMe

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I've tapped all my "real-life" resources and not gotten much help, so even though I left BA again a short time ago, I thought I'd ask this forum for some help since I'm sure many of you have faced a similar dilemma.

My boyfriend and I got engaged recently. We feel pretty awesome about it and look forward to married life. Yay! But the idea of planning a wedding (weddings??), mainly just deciding where we get married, has me a little stressed already.

Here's the deal: We now live in Bogotá, but his friends and family are split between two other Colombian cities. I was born, raised and went to college in the same large American city. If we get married where I'm from, his family couldn't afford to come, not to mention his brother probably couldn't even get the tourist visa since he's not currently working. Most of his friends probably wouldn't be able to come either due to the expense. If we get married where he's from, my family and my parents' friends could come, and our friends in Argentina and his friends in Colombia would have a better shot at being able to make it, but I'm worried that many of my friends back home wouldn't be able to afford it.

Ack. We don't need or particularly want a huge, fancy party. Don't get me wrong, I want it to be nice, but the most important thing to us is having the people we love there. It's not even that many people (I'd be surprised if the list hit 70), it's just that they're spread out all over the damn place. I realize it's not realistic when planning a wedding to expect everyone to RSVP yes. I am also well-versed in the differences between the K1 and K3 visas and all the other legal mumbo jumbo we have to consider. (The forum Visa Journey is fantastic, by the way.) This post isn't asking about where to get legally married; rather, I'm asking about the wedding/party aspect. We'll most likely get legally married in Colombia and do the K3 down the line when we decide to head to the U.S.

To the international married couples on the forum, what did you do? Did you have a wedding in one country and a reception or renewal of vows in another later on? Did you have a wedding in one place and just accept the fact that a large chunk of people weren't going to be able to come? Would you go back and change anything if you could? Now that I'm reading over this post, I'm leaning toward just having a destination wedding in his hometown and then if a bunch of people from my hometown can't come, planning a reception there at a later date.

Any advice and shared experiences will be very much appreciated. Thanks!
 
I just got married to my Argentine wife here in Argentina, and those that could come, came (the majority of my wife's friends are here, and since I am a guy and I don't much like weddings, I was more than happy to oblige with her goal of having the wedding in Argentina). But a friend of mine who married an Argentine had two weddings, one here and one in the U.S. However, nowadays, there are ways to set it up to where you could feed the wedding live online to a camera and set something up like that. Looking back, I don't really regret that I had the wedding only here. The people that really cared about me made it a priority to come.
 
We got married in BA and then had a party in London some months later. Both were great, although I kind of wish everyone could have been there at the same time.
 
Most of my friends had the legal ceremony in one country (you can't get married in 2 countries AFAIK) and then did a party in the other country at a later date.
 
My (Argentine) wife and I got married in the US a year ago (just celebrated our one year anniversary on the 13th). She had to come back to BA for work while I traveled to Washington to shoot the elections before coming here December 1st.

A month later we had a party/reception for her Argentine friends that couldn't be at the wedding. Worked well for us.
 
We had one, in Ireland. We talked about having the legal ceremony in Argentina after but as part of the Irish ceremony included the legal ceremony we haven't. We still need to legalise our marriage here by getting a gestor to present our certificates translated to a local court.

I am going to be stubborn and go down that route because i don't believe we should have to have another marriage ceremony just to satisfy the local legal system. Our irish wedding legally is enough to get me a permanent residency but not to legalise the marriage here. Daft.

Anyone been through this here? Presenting wedding documentation for legal acceptance ?
 
We paid 50 bucks at the courthouse in Seattle. Weddings can be big bucks and we had none to spend. It didn't make much difference to us. The money you save could be used to travel to see both of your families.
 
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