Should We Elope or Have a Wedding?
10 signs you should elope instead of planning the big traditional wedding
It's incredibly exciting after you first get engaged. After all, you're about to marry your best friend! However once the initial excitement, phone calls, celebratory dinners & parties begin to dwindle… you're left with the reality of learning how to plan a wedding. So you dive in head first and spend hours researching, comparing venues and vendors, analyzing your guest list, trying to figure it all out. It’s as if you're now expected to be an expert in everything wedding related. Add in a bit of pressure and unrelenting opinions from family members and you begin to wonder: am I making the right choice? What if we just eloped instead?
Here’s a little secret: If you’re feeling drawn to an elopement style of wedding day, the odds are weighing heavily in favor that an elopement is the right choice for you. Ask a married friend or co-worker about their traditional wedding day and you’re likely to hear they wish they would have just eloped instead. Despite elopement style weddings being on the rise, many people don’t actually know someone who eloped. However if they did, it’s practically guaranteed they don’t regret their decision.
It doesn’t have to look like Vegas…
What if you could have a breathtaking elegant AND adventurous wedding day instead…
Of course you can’t imagine yourself running away to Vegas or a courthouse. You want something beyond a short 10 minute ceremony and paperwork ritual before returning back to your usual daily life. You still want to wear the gorgeous wedding gown or stunning tailored suit. You want something that brings you the excitement and joy that you originally thought that traditional wedding was going to have.
You can do all of it. In fact, if there’s parts of a traditional wedding that you’re holding onto, you don’t have to let those go simply because you're choosing an elopement style wedding. You can still have the first dance. You can still walk down an aisle. You can still celebrate with family and friends. You can still have the cultural ceremony. It simply takes a little creativity and dreaming beyond the box that society created for you.
Without further ado, consider these signs as you make your decision on how to proceed in your wedding day celebrations…
10 signs you should elope
You want a stress-free wedding day
In the world of traditional weddings, this is an oxymoron. Traditional weddings require months of planning and organizing the trivial details you won’t even have a second to notice on your actual wedding day. They entail struggling to gather RSVPs from friends and family members who don’t seem to genuinely care and an ever-growing tension between you and your partner. With the unsolicited opinions weighing in on every aspect of your big day, the stress often doesn’t feel worth it. For some, it isn’t.
You never dreamed of your wedding day
This isn’t to say you don’t love your partner any less, you just want something DIFFERENT - something that actually feels genuine and authentic to who you are as a couple. While traditional weddings possess a predetermined structure, eloping allows you to be incredibly selective on how you choose to celebrate your commitment to one another. You can sit down and imagine the best day ever, free of restrictions, and then somewhere along the way choose to begin your new life together.
3. Or you always dreamed of a big wedding but…
Now that you’re actually in the midst of it, nothing feels right and you’re second guessing the big party. It’s okay to change your mind. When you look forward to something for so long, it’s normal to have an idealized perception of how something should be versus how it actually is. Rather than spending a moment longer holding onto a nonexistent reality, come to terms with what is and decide if it’s still right for you.
4. You’re an introvert or have social anxiety
If the thought of having all eyes on you for a day makes your skin crawl, eloping may be an excellent choice for you. You can create the privacy and intimacy you need to fall deeply into the moment and hold onto every ounce of excitement on your wedding day. Instead of having hundreds of eyes staring directly at you, eloping means you can choose to read your handwritten vows solely to each other.
5. You want a day that holds meaning
Elopements give you the chance to pause, take it all in, and craft a perfect day that actually reflects your relationship. Imagine a wedding day full of all your favorite activities you share together, whether it be as simple as making your favorite breakfast together, returning to a place that holds significance in your lives, or trying a totally new experience altogether.
6. You want to avoid drama
No one’s family is perfect, and maybe the idea of having everyone together feels like a disaster waiting to happen. When you choose to elope you also gain full control over exactly who you want to invite, whether that be only yourselves or just a few close friends. Yes, you CAN still invite a few loved ones if that’s what feels right to you. Ditch the drama and return to matters.
7. You’re an adventurer at heart
Exploring somewhere new sets your soul on fire, so why wouldn’t you want to bring this into your wedding day!? Your nomad soul cannot be tamed by the constraints of a traditional wedding. You desire far more authenticity, so dust off those boots and begin your journey. Go somewhere new. Plan something that brings you that excitement you were originally hoping the traditional wedding would have held for you.
8. You want to reduce your environmental footprint
The average wedding produces over 400lbs of garbage and over 60 tons of CO2- roughly the same amount as 5 people in an entire year. Eloping aligns with your values. By reducing travel, paper products, decor, you are conserving resources and directly impacting your carbon footprint. Cascadian Exposures is incredibly passionate about sustainability and assists couples in making eco-conscious decisions throughout the entire elopement planning process.
9. You want to invest in something that matters
Dropping thousands on a single party sounds crazy, but doing the same for an epic experience and incredible honeymoon sounds amazing. Budgets are a bit hypothetical; what we really do as human beings is place our dollar where we believe it counts. For you, maybe that’s school, an upcoming move, or a house. Maybe you still want to spend the same amount on your wedding day but rather than dropping it on a wedding venue, you embark on a 2 week long adventure with your wedding & honeymoon all wrapped up in one.
10. You don’t stand for tradition
You’re not afraid to go against the status quo and stand for something that holds meaning for you. Breaking up with traditions is NOT hard to do in your world, you’d rather stay fast in your own authenticity. Yet, just because one tradition doesn’t feel right to you… that doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate the ones that do. You write the rules.
Did 5 or more of these sound like you?
Eloping might be the right choice for you.
So where do you go from here? Begin by having an open and honest conversation with your fiancé(e) surrounding your expectations for your wedding day. A few questions to start off the conversation may include:
What area do you see yourselves in?
Who do you see yourself with?
What do you see yourself doing?
When do you want to get married?
What matters most to you?
There’s no need to have your whole wedding day figured out, however you both should have a clear understanding of where each others thoughts lie about the upcoming day.
What if you already planned the wedding and you wish you could elope instead?
Hey there, allow me to introduce myself - I’m Heather McDaniel, the face behind Cascadian Exposures. I once stood in your shoes where we had already planned the wedding, we had even paid for everything. While I can’t tell you to cancel the wedding, I can share my experience in hope you might find some comfort from a bride felt much of the same stress you are.
Approximately 2 years prior to our engagement, my partner and I started a running joke we’d elope some day. In every bit of sarcasm, there’s an ounce of reality I suppose. When it actually came time to plan our wedding however, we went straight into planning a large traditional wedding.
Although we quickly paired down the guest list from hundreds to a mere 50 people, with time we learned it still didn’t feel right. After a year of planning, we ultimately chose to cancel the wedding to elope instead. Somewhere between the stress and the lack of support from loved ones, it made sense to invest in ourselves and revert to what we knew was right all along. Despite the money lost, there was so much gained, including the excitement surrounding our wedding day.
For some, this might not be a feasible decision. It is worth having an open and honest conversation with your partner to draw that conclusion to know whether it is right for YOU. And if it is? I hope you’re ready to start dreaming up the best day ever.