Eloping and Need Peace of Mind

So my FH and I are about to get married on 5/21/20; we've been engaged since 1/25/20. Our actual date will be 5/21/22, but it's not because of COVID-19. I just sent out "save the date/marriage announcements" to our closest family members who we would have loved to have at our wedding. We've decided to be completely honest with them in hopes for them to be understanding and will still treat the vow renewal ceremony and reception as if it's a real wedding that we've both always wanted.



A little back story, we are a growing family of soon to be 5. We already have a 1 year old daughter together and I'm 5months pregnant and once we're married I'll have a lovely 9yr old step daughter. However we still live in a 2 bedroom apartment. So it's a necessity to get a house before getting married but we don't want to wait 2.5 years to be married to each other and financially we can't make it work to have both within the same year.
We've talked to both of our parents and they are very supportive and say everyone will see us as already married but will still attend and treat it like the first time. Both our parents and my sibling and his wife will be present during the elopement. We've worked hard on building our family and we always think what is best for us before anything else. We believe we deserve that wedding ceremony feel for the love we have for each other. I'm so happy to marry the love of my life either way but we are both a little sad we can't truly have how we want it.
There are reasons on why we HAVE to get married now in the sense of insurence and life calling for it but i won't go into detail about that. I just want to hear people's experiences with getting eloped and then having a celebration. Whether or not it still felt like a wedding and if people still treated it with the same importance.