Eloping no longer means an impromptu, drunken night in Las Vegas with Elvis proclaiming you married. While you still can have any one or all of those elements in your modern day elopement, elopements are as unique as each couple. So are you ready to ditch the expectations for your wedding day and make it truly yours? Below is our list of top ten reasons to elope.
1. Authenticity
Perhaps it is all the reasons listed or maybe it’s just “something”, but a big wedding doesn’t feel right for you. This is our number one reason to choose an elopement over a typical wedding. If any part of you feels compelled, forced or obligated to host a typical wedding, then you are not being authentic to yourselves as a couple.
2. Privacy
On average, you will spend more time with your photographer than anyone else on the day of a typical wedding. While the day is about the two of you, you won’t get to spend much time with one another. From events like getting ready to formal photographs with family members to socializing and mingling with guests who may have come a long distance just for you, there are many things that pull you away from one another during a big wedding. Eloping allows you to have more intimacy and privacy during the moment you vow to spend the rest of your life with one another.
3. Budget
Although it’s rude to talk about money, there is no way around it… weddings are expensive. The average cost of a wedding in California in 2018 was $31,487. If you find it difficult to justify the expense or maybe you want to use that money towards something else like purchasing your first home as a couple, elopements can cost a fraction of that price.
4. Family Drama
It happens. Divorced parents don’t get along. Grandpa is senile and tends to have outbursts. Aunt Fran gets a little grabby when she’s had too many drinks at the open bar. Or maybe your sister doesn’t approve of your new spouse to be. We don’t judge! There are plenty of family dynamics that are easily avoided during an elopement.
5. A Honeymoon AND a ceremony
If planned just right, your elopement could be a ceremony and a honeymoon. Maybe you have dreamed of a destination wedding. Well, destination elopements are easier to plan than destination weddings. You can have the same experience with less logistical coordination.
6. Stress
Planning a wedding is stressful and that stress can impact relationships. The fun of getting married can easily be lost as tension to have the “perfect” wedding builds.
Don’t forget… the perfect wedding is whatever YOU want it to be. There is no right or wrong way to get married!
7. Disorganization
Weddings require a lot of planning and organization both leading up to and on the day of. And if you don’t have the planning gene or just aren’t that type A personality with a desire for details, then planning a wedding could be miserable for you.
8. Anxiety
Different from the stresses one could experience from a typical wedding, this is about that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you had to make a speech in your high school history class. And now, when you think about professing the most intimate words in commitment to your partner, you begin to panic and don’t think you can say what you might really be feeling or want to say. Choosing to elope means you don’t have anyone watching or listening to what you want to say.
9. Too Many Guests
If you have a big family or heaps of friends that makes it hard to narrow down a guest list, just cut the guest list! Guest lists easily get away from the couple and the idea of telling someone they weren’t invited to your wedding because you could make space for them is heartbreaking, choose an elopement with only your parents or family only or no one at all. Then no one will feel left out because you left everyone out!
10. Environmental Activism
We would be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to highlight that big weddings produce BIG waste. The average wedding produces 400 to 600 pounds of trash. If you consider that there are 2.1 million weddings a year… that means there is 1 billion ton of garbage being dumped into landfills worldwide every year because of weddings. Weddings are wasteful and take a toll on the environment. If you don’t want to be part of the problem, skip the wedding and choose to elope.
