Dear Gramps,

Thanks so much for this site! I love reading your answers, and wish you the best of life and health for many years to come! My question is simple. I am engaged to be married in the temple in about a month. Of course, my intended and I are looking forward to that special day and wouldn’t trade in the blessings of an eternal marriage for anything, but I was just wondering: We were recently in Las Vegas and couldn’t help but joking about getting married early and then going to the temple afterwards for the sealing following a legal marriage. OK, so it WAS a tempting thought…if you’ve ever taken part in planning a wedding you’ll understand!!! Is there a waiting period or time frame required between a legal marriage and a temple sealing per Church policy? I know it exists for newly baptized members, but my fiance and I are both lifelong members…and both endowed already. Any thoughts?

Chris, from: Mesa, AZ

Dear Chris,

After you are sealed in the temple you will regret ever having had such thoughts! Apart from all that, if you have a civil marriage you cannot be sealed together in the temple until after the passage of one year!

The temple sealing is not just another place to be married. Those two unions actually have NOTHING IN COMMON. A marriage in the world is the government’s authority to cohabit until there is a separation, either by edict or by the death of one of the partners.

To be sealed for time and eternity in the Lord’s Holy House authorizes those who faithfully keep the covenants that they make with the Lord at that sacred time to be rulers forever in eternal worlds. Nothing should be done that would in any way jeopardize the greatest of all blessings that the Lord has prepared for his children in mortality.

Gramps