Wanna thank y'all fo the kindest of words.
Whirlwind keeps a blowin.
We in between churches now so to speak, so we thinkin of doin sometin at City Hall and then comin back wit sometin mo religious once we settle.
Choz,
Congrats on your engagement.
It did something similar a few years back. I had a civil wedding (not at City Hall) and planned on something more religous down the road.
My advice to you: If you have children before the religous marriage (like I did), things will get more complicated and harder to plan and execute that idea. Therefore, try and do the religous marriage ASAP if it's important to the both of you.
It's a bit strange that the church would care, since the city hall marriage would be perfectly legal and binding, meaning a child you had would not be born out of wedlock. Hopefully they didn't hassle you to the point where you thought of skipping the whole damn thing.
I grew up Catholic and have a big family, so I wanted a church and big wedding. My wife is not religious at all, and cheap, so she wanted nothing to do with a church or a fancy hall with 300 guests. I gave in and we ended up doing a Vegas wedding with my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, my wife's sister and husband, and 25 or so friends. Airfare, hotel, the chapel, and dinner for roughly 35 people cost me less than $3,500. Some bar/club in one of the hotels had a 70s night, so everyone ended up dancing to the same music I would have paid a DJ to play at a big wedding anyway.
Something like that would be my recommendation.