I knew dh was “the one” within an hour after meeting him on a rather unusual cruise to the Bahamas, it took him a few hours longer to figure it out. We were unofficially married by a group of crazy Patriot Heads that had just joined the Conch Republic Militia, Parrot Head Division, the night after we met. The ceremony included people in coconut bras, grass skirts and blowing conch shell horns and swearing wedding vows over an Orson Scott Card book. My mother and sister where there and we thought it was good enough but by the end of the cruise we realized that it wasn’t really legal and we’d like to have more family in friends included so we planned a second wedding a year to the day after the first one on the same cruise line. We wanted to get married at the same point (about half way between Nassau and Miami) but found out that we would need a international marriage license that would be a pain. To avoid this we decided to get legally married at the Justice of the Peace the morning of the second cruise wedding. DH’s parents wanted to go the JP to make sure we ''really got married" my family recognized the first wedding as ‘real’ albeit not legal. 20+ years and three kids later the in-laws are still waiting for the divorce they feel is inevitable…
PM me if you want to see more details and a very very old web page (we thought it was cutting edge at the time, I can’t believe how kludgy it looks today!)