Eloping but feeling a little guilty

I personally would let her know ahead of time, but be clear that you are doing just you two for the ceremony. She may be understandably disappointed, but you and your fiance get to choose what you want to do.

It depends on what kind of person she is. If shes a huge grude holder then tell her before. Your FH should know the best approach since it's his mother.

My FH and I are leaning towards eloping but we had let our families know a good year and a half prior. Fortunately, only one person was disappointed (my grandma).

I think that as long as she knows you're eloping, you don't have to share any details. It's obvious that the reason she won't be there is unrelated to her personal ability to travel to the wedding, so the fact that it's near her home is irrelevant. I don't know what she's like or what you're relationship with her is like, but if she knows about it ahead of time there's more time for her to feel badly about not being invited and more time for her to try to guilt you into inviting her. It also possibly opens up the potential for her to show up on her own, which, if that happened, would almost certainly make your own mother feel worse about not being there. If you keep the location a secret, you can talk about it in the past tense when you show her photos without worrying that she could do something you don't want her to do with the information.

I will say that it's better for you to just rip that Band-Aid off and say something because if you don't and they find out it's going to make things worse. My fiance is not super close with his sister and mother and father and I don't know why but they've always been great to me so I was the one pushing to tell them what we were doing even if they weren't invited and luckily my mother-in-law and sister-in-law understood but my sister-in-law flat-out said that they would have been hurt had we not said anything. My father-in-law did sound disappointed but he also understands that my fiance just doesn't like eyes on him. I will say that elopement don't always mean just you two rather you can have maybe the mother's there but will that cause more drama?