pyow for Elopement

I don't think it's rude. You've chosen to elope because you don't have the funds to host guests for a wedding and they pretty much invited themselves to the elopement, to me that's what's rude. I think your idea is fine, if they want to come to dinner they can take care of their own bills.

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I agree. If they specifically have said they wanted to go to the elopement, I think it's fine.

Those who know your basic plan is to elope, no guests, who want to join you or even offer to treat you to dinner, instead of doing a shower or something, that is fine. It is only basically you planning a small wedding and you planning guests to pay, that is rude. As in most things, it is fine to accept other's offers, or requests. And after checking max numbers allowed at the courthouse, if a few people treat you , jointly planning dinner as a gift, fine to accept .

This one is tough because in theory it’s not offensive to tell the person that’s begging you to come “okay but you’ll have to pay for it” — but it becomes a very slippery slope when it comes to the guestlist and there’s a lot of opportunity for someone to be offended. Ex: I wouldn’t mind having paid to attend my best friend’s wedding as I would have loved to be there with her. But I’d also never ASK to be included because I’m not that type of person to interject myself like that. What if our other close friend IS? And she asked so she got to go but I didn’t get to go because I didn’t ask.....I would be, downright, devastated to discover after the fact that someone else got to go but I didn’t because I just hadn’t spoken up. So then you have some hoops to jump through to figure out how to do this without offending some one. To me, that seems like coming up with a small guestlist that you reach out to and say “we’re doing this but not doing this and you can join if you want to pay” but that becomes a bit murkier and may be spiraling away from what you actually want.

Hey there

Mcskipper brings up a great point about some friends or family missing out because they didn’t speak up or know about the elopement and following dinner at all. As they mentioned, it seems the only way to avoid this is a small guest list, however, this strays away from what you originally wanted.

Do you think this could potentially be an issue with your family or friends, or you don’t foresee it?

Oh wow. You ladies bring up so many good points I never considered. Argh! I guess its not as easy as just running away together, huh?

We are doing an elopement type wedding ourselves. We decided on Gatlinburg with just the 2 of us. Our parents got kinda upset that we wanted to do it that way so we found a place that was still small but allowed a few guest(6 is all we can have). Since we are paying for all of our wedding stuff ourselves we told our parents that if you decide to attend you will have to foot your own bill for stuff. We in no way have made anyone obligated to go and we have made that very clear. We have decided that next summer we will have a small gathering or friends and family as a reception to celebrate our marriage.
As far as dinner I think both of our parents have decided to let us do our own thing after our ceremony. We may have dinner with them all the night before with the ones who do come, but we haven't really set anything in stone just yet.

I love that, Cheryl. That's such a good idea.

It's a slippery slope if you start saying yes you can come to dinner after. Once you start saying yes people will catch wind of it and invite themselves as well. Go with your plan and then have a little picnic party later on for those that want to celebrate you.

I should add that we actually eloped across from the courthouse with just my son and then we went to dinner after. We told our parents right after we eloped and my parents were disappointed we didn't tell them so they could come but we didn't want anyone else there. We had the big reception with ceremony at a later time for friends and family and it was perfect