Questions on Eloping?

I'm not eloping, but I can relate. My fiance and I already own a home together and have some joint finances so we also "feel married" as far as that goes. As we got deeper into planning we seriously considered eloping or even having a small ceremony with our parents/siblings/close family and going out to a nice dinner afterwards. Heck, sometimes we still want to elope!

At the end of the day, no ones opinions matter other than your own. If you want to elope just the two of you then you can or maybe express that to your family and see if they'd like to be involved but definitely stand your ground on what you want!

Hi Julie! Welcome to the WeddingWire Community! If you think eloping would better for you and your FH, then go for it! You've made some valid points, and it seems like you have a great plan. I would just inform your close family members so they have a heads-up. You should also check this Eloping Brides Discussion for further guidance! Good luck!

We feel the same as you. We are going to elope too. We've both been married and did the traditional stuff. We want to go somewhere nice so it makes sense to spend the $ on a honeymoon. I am going to get a dress though 😁

Two of our friends of ours recently had a "micro wedding" – I didn't know this was a thing, otherwise I would have looked into it because I, like you, had already been living with now-DH for a year and a half and already felt married! From the way it was described, their micro wedding was a balance of a traditional wedding and an elopement. They had 11 people total, immediate family only, no friends. They had their ceremony at a small garden and paid a coordinator $1,100 for the use of the garden, photography, a small cake, a bridal bouquet, and a party bus that transported the bride, groom, and 11 family members around the city for a brewery-hopping tour. The bride still got to wear a wedding gown, and the groom wore a tux. The ceremony was performed by an ordained family member. And on their brewery-hopping tour, they let their friends know their whereabouts via Facebook. After the tour, the bride and groom took the family members to dinner at a nice restaurant. All in all, from the gown to the dinner and everything in between, I would estimate they spent $2,000 – $3,000 total. Hope this helps!

View Quoted Comment We are also having a microwedding, ours is in Vegas. Invited 10 guests, having 9 come (just parents and siblings). Our budget is $4,000 and we are below that right now. We were originally going to elope but I felt my mom would be disappointed and I was afraid I would regret not having people there. Microweddings are a great compromise. We were able to plan this in 6 months time: engaged in March, planning in April, married October.

I guess I’m having a micro wedding as well! I never knew that term existed until now and have been putting elope in quotes since we’ll be having a few guests. 😂

I too can can relate to your situation! My FH and I have been together since high school (almost 14 years) and have already built a life together... we have our son, house, and for all intents and purposes “feel” like we’re already married. For us, we couldn’t justify spending such a large amount on one day.

We started out planning a traditional wedding but I quickly found myself in tears so early in the planning process. I felt like I had to make too many sacrifices to stay within a realistic budget and I just wasn’t happy with our options. We could afford to spend more but it just seemed silly to us considering our situation.
My FH told me to take a step back and think about what was most important to us. We landed with an absolute must list of a unique outside ceremony location, kick a** photography, our VIP’s in attendance, and ideally less than 15K... anything else was a bonus. This led us to an intimate destination wedding/honeymoon where we only invited our parents, two best friends, and obviously our son will be there. We haven’t regretted the decision once and our family has been very supportive!
In terms of “how to elope”, there’s no one fit all answer as long as you have an officiant, get your marriage license, and have witnesses if required by the stare you are marrying in. Eloping can be as simple or extravagant as you want it to be! I’ve seen courthouse weddings, to couples hiking to the top of a mountain getting changed in the woods and having a ceremony with epic scenery, to eloping on the beach and having a Pinterest worthy picnic on the beach for just the two of them after to celebrate. Seriously check out elopement hashtags on IG and you’ll be amazed at all the beautiful elopements no matter how simple! You can still have traditional vendors such as a photographer, videographer, and florist if you’d like!
Some hotels and resorts have all inclusive elopement packages which make planning a breeze. There are also wedding coordinators who specialize in elopements. We hired a coordinator who will officiate our wedding, decorate the ceremony space, provide my bouquet, and assist in planning! We also splurged on a photographer and videographer. We’ll be getting married on a beach cliff in Oregon and then will have a private dinner at a nearby restaurant!
Good luck planning! “Eloping” was seriously the best decision we made!

So, we eloped in May 2018. We had both been married once before and wanted small. First it was going to be just close fam & friends (about 30 people) but the area we chose to have the wedding, no one could accommodate us for few hours because it was Sinday of Memorial weekend. We would not budge on the date because my birthday was the day before, hubby's is the day after so the 27th meant too much to us to change. Then we had issues of some family dynamics that was causing stressors. We eliminated the stress by eloping.

There were 7 of us plus 2 photographers. We rented a gorgous place, which we stayed at a total of 6 days, that allowed us to use the property to do the ceremony. My son married us so we wrote 90% of it and he added some to it. We did it outdoors and all of us stood since it took 5-10 minutes. We were so played back, our photographer even said he had never done a wedding where everyone was so calm and relaxed. He just informed me yesterday that my photo program is done and that the pictures are truly awesome because of how relaxed and fun everyone was. We did some photos before the wedding and then after. There was this great restaurant a few miles away that we went and had a nice sit down meal. We had worked with them a week before to set us up on a round table with linens, a vase for our flowers (mine and MOH bouquets) off in the back. It was awesome. We had the photographers come to which was great cause they got more shots there. Oh, I did a wedding dress, tho different style then a traditional, I'll post a pic for you. Hubby wore dress pants, a shirt and tie.

If you have any questions, please reply and I will do the same. I could write all day on things about our wedding day, but wont take up your time. I'll help you if you want more... best of luck.
Oh, we did not tell our families until after. We feared if we had, it would not have been the day we wanted. Little by little people would have been added and that was not what we wanted. This was not hard to do because we work out on the road so we dont see them to often. Our photographer sent me a half dozen photos (that same night) and I made picture cards. We hand delivered the ones to my dad and 3 brothers (and their families) so that they knew first then mailed out the rest. I was surprised, I thought one of my sister in laws was going to be mad, nope. The only one who felt a bit hurt was my dad. This is more because my mom died just 2 1/2 weeks before we got married. I think he felt hurt more because of her death (and she was one of the reasons for eloping. Health issues that made it impossible for her to come which meant dad would not have) After 5 minutes of the news sinking in, he got up, hugged us both and was cool. Everyone else... very happy for us.