Pre-international Elopement Celebration

Is there a reason you cannot do the marriage at the time you have guests? You basically are omitting only a few elements of a full wedding reception. There are even people who do a simple reception with desserts and drinks after the marriage ceremony.

Certainly you can invite people to a send-off reception for your elopement with possible finger foods and some entertainment. People will then decide whether they want to come. They probably won't be surprised by your choice. But consider also making some fuller plans for their visit even if getting together casually with your friends.

Take it from someone who eloped this year: people have a very hard time conceptualizing an event that strays from the norm. I highly recommend that if you do this event, that you divorce it completely from any association to your nuptials. Find another reason to bring everyone together, if you can. I understand people are willing to travel from a great distance; in my experience, there will be misunderstandings in the group, perhaps even people who assume they are attending your wedding. Tread very carefully.

We literally provided our guests with a link to the wedding livestream as well as careful wording on our invitations that their presence whether near or far was desired, in addition to ceremony times listed in a variety of time zones. We still got responses where people said they unfortunately could not make the journey.

Again, tread carefully with this. I have learned the hard way, to a great deal of heartache and disappointment, that the wedding culture is a deeply ingrained thing and not one welcoming of deviation.

Additionally, I want to add that the honeyfund route is generally frowned upon. The wedding industry is predatory as is. The fact that there is a company that has succeeded in infiltrating the simple act of gifting money to a couple --already an acceptable rule of etiquette-- and built a profit scheme on it, is rather despicable. Don't worry, a lot of people have been led down this path, but I can assure you, if people want to help fund your wedding, they will either get a heart to heart from you or they will do it out of the kindness of their heart. And again, tacking such options onto the event you are planning, muddies the message and leaves people wondering what they are coming to celebrate, if not a wedding.

On the idea of deviating from the norm, one bride is planning on entering the ceremony more as a group with the wedding party. Even for that change, it is good to notify the guests to be ready for that alternative entrance since they may be confused whether to stand or when to stand.