Planning an LDS, Military wedding around deployment?

"I know that a lot of military couples have a small/fast courthouse marriage and have a larger wedding/reception later when they know they can."

Well, no, that's really rude of them. Once you're married, you're married - it's fine to throw a larger party later on, but you don't get to throw a second fake wedding because you made the choice to have a quick marriage before the deployment.

And FWIW, courthouse marriages require some advance notice as well. You can't just walk in and get married five minutes later ... you need to apply for a license, wait until the license is ready, and book an appointment for a wedding ceremony. You can only get married the same day in Vegas and a handful of other places in the USA.

But, anyway, I don't really know what you want to hear. You said your bishop is unfamiliar with deployment timelines. You said that the military can change a timeline on a whim, and it sounds like they can't/won't give you a solid deployment timeline at this point. There's really not a magical solution here.

So your options are:

1. Set a wedding date in the church within 30 days from now.

2. If your church requires more than 30 days of prep, then ask the bishop if you can start the marriage prep process now, set a tentative wedding date within the next year, and then if your fiance gets the deployment call, bump up the wedding date and accept the fact that some guests may be unable to attend (and you ought to reimburse them if they've already spent money on a plane ticket or something).

3. Just wait until you finish school and he returns from deployment (which, if you're still in school, is what I would personally do).

4. Have a courthouse wedding before he leaves, throw a Welcome Home/Marriage Celebration party when he returns, and then have a private ceremony for the bishop seal your marriage in the eyes of your church at a later date. If you want to invite a handful of loved ones as witnesses, then take them out to lunch afterward.

You said his deployment time is uncertain, and you're both still in school. With so many uncertainties up in the air, why not just wait a while to get married? If it's Meant To Be, then you'll still be together once your school and military obligations are fulfilled.

We planned a fantastic all bells and whistles beach wedding in six months. He deployed a couple of months after the wedding. Unless your man is in a rapid response team (like special forces and the like), there will give him more than 30 days notice. What we did is we planned our wedding around the set schedule and we also picked the date around block leave in the summer time so chances of getting approved was likely. If you are bent on having it on a particular date that conflicts with training or deployment schedule, then you will have a great deal of disappointment. Another option is to marry after he comes back because they are guaranteed leave after.

Is there a reason you haven't asked this question of your Bishop? It would seem he would know more about this than random strangers on the internet.