Bad Manners and Brimstone

I'm curious as to how you know about this, assuming that you are not either Sam, Jazz, or one of the other four people in attendance at the ceremony.

If you are not, then the secret's out anyway, right?

If you are, then I'm guessing that you are not comfortable with keeping this secret.
If this IS the case, I'm not sure how obligated you are to comply, but on the other hand, I'm not sure what good would come if you didn't.

One of the sisters that was in attendance is my granddaughter-in-law.  I don't know why she told us (her DH's family), but we know both Sam and Jazz to varying extents as Jazz lived with sis while my grandson was deployed and Sam eventually moved in, too.  I"ve spent time with them all, including a week where everyone was ill and they needed help with the kids (my great-grandchildren).

I guess the secret IS out.  I don't know who all might know, but someone in Sam's family asked a question about it, and she lied to them. 

I am completely comfortable keeping the secret because it doesn't matter one way or another to me and I get it with the military aspect.  I know that revealing the truth would cause upheaval and hard feelings and, as an in-law, I wouldn't want to do that.

And in many countries, including, I believe, the UK, you must have a civil marriage at a government office in addition to any other kind of wedding you have.

Not quite true in the UK. Here in England and Wales, clergy of several major religions - eg Church of Engkand, Judaism, Quakerism - who perform marriages in a registered place of worship are also licensed to complete the civil marriage forms, so the religious ceremony is also a civil ceremony. And for weddings of some other faiths - e.g. Sikh, Muslim - provided the wedding takes place in a building registered for marriages a registrar can attend and do the civil marriage paperwork. 

And even if you do need an actual civil marriage ceremony in addition to whatever religious rite you are having (either because your religion is not something recognised by the civil authorities, or it isn’t taking place in an authorised building), you can arrange for a registrar to perform it in any place licensed for marriages.

I know this kind of thing bothers many people, but not me.  There is a big range of situations where there is more than one wedding, and they are just so different.

- Couple can't decide whether to get married in her town or his, so they have two big "public" (not in the sense that all are invited, just as opposed to private and unannounced) weddings, but they hold themselves out as married after the first one.
- Couple had a "public" wedding of some kind with guests and then decides that due to circumstances they were unable to have as big or as nice a wedding as they'd dreamed, so just a year or two later, they have another one (even if they call it a "vow renewal"). 

These and like situations strike me as way off.  At best, another ceremony would seem silly, as if the first vows were meaningless.  And that's whether or not the first or the second ceremony was the "official" one (i.e., recognized by the government).  But they seem very different to me from situations like these:

- Wedding is planned for later, but one or both are about to be deployed and in case of tragedy, they want to be sure the survivor gets rights (this is what my aunt and uncle did during WWII: secretly married before he was deployed and had the modest wedding they had planned anyway after he returned).
- Wedding is planned for later, but a medical crisis suddenly arose, and for reasons such as insurance, survivor benefits, and establishment as status as Family for hospital visitation, etc., they marry privately immediately.
- Wedding is planned for later, but a parent is about to die, so they have a private bedside ceremony and then continue with the wedding as planned later.  (We have friends who did this; it was very touching.  It was not a secret, and the dying mother did manage to make it to the BWW a couple of months later after all, and died shortly after.  Everyone was very happy for them to have done it this way.)
- There are still countries where same-sex (or sometimes different-religion couples) cannot officially marry, although their marriages performed elsewhere are recognized as valid.  This was the case in the various US states for a few years, I'm sure you recall.  So couples go to a jurisdiction where they can marry officially, either before or after a wedding with their family and friends back in their community, rather than dragging everyone to the other location.  Surely no one begrudges them or their families that.

And then there are situations such as my husband has run into several times as a clergyman.  Say you want to get married in a state where the officiant you want is not licensed.  You can pay a few hundred dollars for a one-time permit, or you can just go to City Hall a few days before or after the wedding and do a private civil ceremony.  Or if you want to get married in some other country where it's complicated.  This happens a LOT, believe me.  We almost did it ourselves, when we learned that Wisconsin, where our wedding was to be, required both people showing up in person for the license three weeks in advance; we were all set to have a City Hall marriage in Boston, where we lived, first until we learned that for $30 Wisconsin would waive the three week requirement (WTF?  Then why require it?  But I digress).  If you've been to many weddings, I bet you have been to at least one such, and you never knew it.  And why would you care?

We have seen several people saying that what makes the difference to them is whether the couple is open about it or keeps it a secret; they feel like it's fraudulent not to tell and that they don't like that they are not seeing the moment when the couple is actually wed.  I'm not sure why that seems so important or why it's anyone else's business, but then, previous generations felt the same way about public display of a bloody sheet after the wedding night!  And at least in the US, you aren't seeing The Moment anyway -- the marriage becomes official for legal purposes not when they say "I do,' but when the officiant signs and files the license.  If The Moment for you is the "I do" before community and/or God, then you're seeing it anyway, no matter when the couple did the legal bona fides.

And in many countries, including, I believe, the UK, you must have a civil marriage at a government office in addition to any other kind of wedding you have.  I don't think that makes the wedding a sham or a lie or anything else.

So for me, I roll my eyes at people who just want to have things more than one way -- like both destination wedding and BWW at home, or any kind of multiple "public" weddings for more attention.  But for situations like the ones above, I honestly don't think it's anyone else's business whether the government requirements were met at the same time as The Wedding.

A lot of people don’t consider a delayed reception as equivalent to a wedding. My guess would be that they are afraid if they openly made known that they had got married with only four witnesses and would have a big white reception later, these people (a) would get in a huff that they hadn’t been invited to the wedding, and (b) would not consider that an invitation just to a reception calls for wedding presents.

The four people who were at their real wedding must be complicit in the fiction they have put out on social media, otherwise the lie would certainly come out and cause major grief. They presumably know the family members concerned and agree that this is a reasonable worry, or they surely wouldn’t be going along with it?

Seconded. She has created an account on a crowd-funding website and let everyone know she wants them all to chip in to the tune of a minimum of $75 each for her delayed honeymoon. When contributions failed to flood in, she let everyone know that she was disappointed by their stinginess. If she’s not capable of working out for herself why she's at risk of losing friends, it’s quite pointless to try to explain to her.