Hi Author
Same thing happened to me. I live in Bangladesh. We got married in 21-04-2012. She came to Bangladesh from canada. We saw each other and spent time then we decided to get married. Her family lives in canada and most of them in uk. She has no one in Bangladesh. We decided to do ceremony or reception later because my wife wanted her brothers, sisters and all her family members to attend in the reception. We just got a legal wedding. Few of my family members attended in this wedding. We applied in january 2013 but they didn't accepted our application. Problem is CIC didn't send refused letter or anything. My wife went to a lawyer. The lawyer said to apply again. So we had to apply again. We did our reception ceremony in 14-08-2014. It was really so big party. All of her family came to celebrate the reception. It's my little story