My Own Private I Do: Difference between revisions

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[[File:~~Huge_wedding~~.jpg|frame|With this many guests, wouldn't you want some privacy too?]]

[[File:Huge wedding.jpg|frame|With this many guests, wouldn't you want some privacy too?]]

{{quote|''"Everyone's driving me crazy... This is supposed to be our wedding day. Why did we invite all these people?!"''|'''{{spoiler|Pam}}''', ''[[The Office]]''}}

Fiction gives us many [[Wedding Day~~|Wedding Days~~]]. Sometimes, the couple is forced to [[Altar the Speed]], maybe due to [[Parental Marriage Veto|meddling parents]] or [[Shotgun Wedding|a baby on the way]]. The couple doesn't ''want'' to move the date up, but something or someone else is forcing them to do it. Sometimes, the couple just elopes, and avoids the big wedding mess altogether.

Fiction gives us many [[Wedding Day]]s. Sometimes, the couple is forced to [[Altar the Speed]], maybe due to [[Parental Marriage Veto|meddling parents]] or [[Shotgun Wedding|a baby on the way]]. The couple doesn't ''want'' to move the date up, but something or someone else is forcing them to do it. Sometimes, the couple just elopes, and avoids the big wedding mess altogether.

But every now and then, a couple ends up having [[No Kill Like Overkill|TWO]] ~~weddings -- one~~ for themselves, and one for everyone else. This usually takes two forms:

But every now and then, a couple ends up having [[No Kill Like Overkill|TWO]] weddings—one for themselves, and one for everyone else. This usually takes two forms:

'''Elope First, Plan Later''': The couple elopes, but before they can tell anyone, somebody says something to make them feel guilty for not including everyone. So they end up planning a large ceremony/reception after all. The couple will have to jump through hoops to prevent anyone from finding out they're already married. The secret may or may not be spilled, but ultimately it won't matter.

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=== Elope First, Plan Later ===

== Elope First, Plan Later ==

* {{spoiler|Niles and Daphne}} from ''[[Frasier]]''. They elope in Reno, and are then guilted into not one, but ''two'' more ceremonies to make the family happy. It got really silly, and eventually the cover is blown and they fess up.

* ''[[Paranoia Agent]]'' played with this one, but they're actually having the second service to get photographs for nostalgia purposes.

* [[X Wing Series|Corran Horn and Mirax Terrik]] quietly got married in a small ceremony by Wedge Antilles, acting as captain of the ''[[Cool Starship|Lusankya]]'', in order to head off an outburst by Mirax's dad (since Corran's father had been the officer who sent Booster Terrik, a notorious smuggler, to prison). They later had a more traditional ceremony once it was too late for Booster to do anything.

** [[Star Wars Union|Luke and Mara]] do much the same, partly on Corran's ~~advice--they~~ have a private Jedi wedding, and a public wedding after that.

** [[Star Wars Union|Luke and Mara]] do much the same, partly on Corran's advice—they have a private Jedi wedding, and a public wedding after that.

* {{spoiler|Ethan and Lilah}} in ''[[Ctrl+Alt+Del]]'' run away to Jamaica, and then decide to have the big wedding after all. Hiding their already-married status until the big wedding day becomes a big plot point (and a source of blackmail for one character).

* Michael and Deanna in ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' secretly got married before they moved in together, but later had a big fancy wedding for Deanna's mother to plan.

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* In ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'', Tiana and Naveen's ''real'' wedding happens in the swamp while they're frogs, but once they become human again, they have a more standard ceremony in a church.

=== Plan First, Elope Later ===

== Plan First, Elope Later ==

* In ''[[Grumpier Old Men]]'', Gustafson's daughter and Goldman's son are planning a wedding, but it falls apart under pressure. In the end they show a wedding ceremony, which turns out to be for Goldman and Maria Ragetti. The kids reveal they eloped.

* ''[[Mad About You]]'' - After days of meddling family members and one disaster after another, Paul and Jamie "escape" the night before their wedding and end up getting married by a ConEd worker who also happens to be a licensed minister (played by Lyle Lovett) in a construction zone in the middle of the night. They go through with their big ceremony the next day, and the family never finds out.

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* Played with in book 2 of ''[[The Hunger Games]]'', where {{spoiler|the characters ''claim'' to have eloped in advance of the big day, so that they can claim to have a baby on the way without, presumably, offending anyone's moral standards}}.

* [[Boston Legal]]: Shirley and {{spoiler|Carl}} end up doing this when her priest and his rabbi nearly come to blows about how the wedding will run. They have a rather nasty fight - and then Shirley walks in, apologises, tells him that the only truly important thing is that she's marrying him, and agrees enthusiastically when he suggests eloping. They end up having a double ceremony with {{spoiler|Alan and Denny}} in Nimmo Bay. Viewers [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|pulled out]] [[Tear Jerker|hankies]]. They don't elope, but their wedding is ''much'' quieter than originally planned, blending the two halves of this trope.

* An unusual variant occurs in ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]'', where the fancy wedding goes off without a ~~hitch -- except~~ that it's the titular groom's future self, rather than his present self, who ends up standing at the altar. When his present self gets back to the present, he and his wife stop by a justice of the peace just to make sure that ''this'' version of him is officially married as well.

* An unusual variant occurs in ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]'', where the fancy wedding goes off without a hitch—except that it's the titular groom's future self, rather than his present self, who ends up standing at the altar. When his present self gets back to the present, he and his wife stop by a justice of the peace just to make sure that ''this'' version of him is officially married as well.

* In [[Rocko's Modern Life]], when Filburt and Dr. Hutchison get married, they have a big, traditional wedding planned. But because their families (cats and turtles) don't get along, and because Dr. Hutchison's mother was too involved, the couple have a Drive-Thru wedding before appearing at the park where the ceremony was to be held.

* In ''[[Wild Rock]]'', Emba takes Yuuen away in the middle of their ceremony to make their own vows of eternity alone.

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* In the Tales of Symphonia fanfiction [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7037669/1/Worth_It Worth It], (the last in a series of eight) Zelos and Sheena find themselves facing two weddings in order to keep the peace - a huge, pretentious, overly-extravagant wedding held by the King in Meltokio and a long, boring, stuffy, traditional wedding in Mizuho. Neither wedding appeals to the couple, and as they are bound and determined to enjoy their own wedding, they grab Lloyd and Colette as witnesses and have a private ceremony at the hot springs.

* Played with in Patricia Briggs' ''River Marked'': Mercy and Adam are planning a big wedding, but it's getting out of hand and all the pressure is starting to drive Mercy nuts. So they decide to have a quiet advance wedding at Mercy's church, but she wears her dress anyway since she already has it... {{spoiler|All her family and friends are there, because Adam knew she would regret doing it without them, and they basically have the wedding they'd planned in the first place, just without the performance anxiety and scaled back a bit.}}

=== Miscellaneous/Other ===

== Miscellaneous/Other ==

* On ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'' Lane and Zach's weddings put an interesting twist on this pattern. The first wedding is a Buddhist wedding to satisfy Lane's grandmother from Korea, the second wedding is a proper Seventh Day Adventist wedding for Lane's mother and extended family in America, and then the reception is done in a style more appropriate to the couple themselves.

* In ''Papa Married a Mormon'', precursor to ''[[The Great Brain]]'' books, Tom,Sr. and Tena marry four times. Tom whisks Tena away to Salt Lake City, where they get married by a justice of the peace a few days before her eighteenth birthday. When she turns eighteen, they go back and marry again. Shortly before the birth of their first child, the bishop agrees to marry them in a private Mormon ceremony and even fudges the date so no one will say anything about the child. Years later, they have small Catholic ceremony when Tom, Sr is on his deathbed.

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** He stops the fight between Harry and Art over who will be the Best Man by asking Harry to perform the ceremony, having Art give the bride away and choosing Roz as his [[Best Woman]].

* An interesting variant in ''[[Discworld/I Shall Wear Midnight|I Shall Wear Midnight]]'', where {{spoiler|Tiffany marries Roland and Letitia in a folk ceremony the night before the official ceremony, because it boosts the [[Theory of Narrative Causality|narrative significance]] (and therefore the power) of what she's doing, i.e. [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|stopping]] [[Humanoid Abomination|the Cunning Man]].}}

* Inversed in ''[[The Secret Agreement]]'', where Iori conducts his own private "I don't" when he only pretends to drink from the marriage cup that is part of his [[Arranged Marriage]] ceremony. His sister, who is under the illusion that he just doesn't like taking food from people who aren't her or their mother, notices it and laughs about it privately with Yuuichi, who recognizes it for what it ~~is--Iori~~ symbolically indicating that even if he's married, his love is only pledged to Yuuichi.

* Inversed in ''[[The Secret Agreement]]'', where Iori conducts his own private "I don't" when he only pretends to drink from the marriage cup that is part of his [[Arranged Marriage]] ceremony. His sister, who is under the illusion that he just doesn't like taking food from people who aren't her or their mother, notices it and laughs about it privately with Yuuichi, who recognizes it for what it is—Iori symbolically indicating that even if he's married, his love is only pledged to Yuuichi.

* In the novel ''Breach of Promise'' by Perri O'Shaughnessy, Mike and Lindy Markey are revealed to have had their own private "I do," at a small church in Mexico. However, unlike most examples of this trope, they never do get around to having a "real" wedding, and their ceremony in Mexico has no legal force. This causes some serious problems for Lindy, when Mike has an affair with a younger woman and wants to kick her out of his life... {{spoiler|They eventually do get back together and get married legally.}}