Hijacked Wedding Day

So my fiancé & I have been together for almost 12 years (on our supposed wedding date) & engaged for 11.5 years. We’re taking a vacation to Branson next week. While we were looking at things to do there, I had the idea to go get married, eloped, whatever. We talked about it for about a week, and we talked about how my family would feel if I didn’t wear my dress. I knew they’d be upset, because they spent money on it, which I totally get!! But this is me, thinking, I’ll just buy a simple cocktail dress and probably won’t tell anybody about it, except for our 2 witnesses, and have a ceremony/reception with people down the line.


We planned to get married the first time in 2018, funds were short. Okay, we’ll try later. Covid hit, and I found out that my pastor uncle married my cousins over Zoom. I told him, and we knew we could’ve done that, since I wanted my uncle to marry us originally. He passed in 2024. So we didn’t think too much of it anymore. Last year, we talked about either a wedding or get our own place, so we decided on a house. We bought it, and it’s a lot more of a mess than we realized. So no wedding until we figure out what to do on how to fix our house.
Rewind a little bit, to 2023, when my mom told me to find a dress if you plan to get married this/next year. So I did. I love it to all get out. Life happened. It’s been sitting in my aunt’s closet for 3 years.
So fast forward to now. My family now wants me (since they know about my hiatus wedding) to wear my real dress in this small chapel in the woods, and look out of place because they paid for it when I already made plans to adjust my cocktail dress to fitting me already. My fiancé and I planned to not tell anybody, because of the stress that will cause me, specifically. This is one of few things that I can actually control. I had the realization of them not wanting to come, since I gave them a short amount of time, that’s what we speculated, anyway. So advice/encouragement words would be nice.
The “small wedding now to bigger celebration later” is starting to pick up nowadays. I know people would be hurt if I didn’t wear my dress, but I feel in my heart that it isn’t the right environment or space for me to. Thanks for reading.