10 Reasons to Consider Eloping

If you were one of those little girls who dreamed about her wedding, in your head it was probably something similar to this: large white dress, horse-drawn carriage, Mr. Right waiting for you at the end of an aisle, your friends and family surrounding you and gushing about how perfect everything is. You may have never understood why anyone would run off and elope.

I eloped in Las Vegas in March 2017 and here are my top ten reasons that you should consider doing it, too.

1. You can have as much or as little of that fairytale wedding as you want.

You can still be really traditional if you want to; go and get that white dress, hire a church, get that horse drawn carriage. It is your wedding; you decide how you want it to be.

2. It goes back to being your wedding.

Do you have people in your life who just take over? They think you should have a white dress and won’t hear of any other opinions or preferences. It can be hard to tell these people no. You don’t want to hurt their feelings but you also really want that pink dress you’ve fallen in love with. If you elope, these decisions are much easier.

3. No Seating Plan Stress

“I don’t want to sit next to her.” “I don’t like him.” “If he’s going, then I’m not.” All things you hear when planning a wedding, everyone feels like they should be your most important guest and their preferences about other people there are so important. In reality they’re not.

4. You don’t have to do it alone.

When we eloped we didn’t go by ourselves. Our nearest and dearest were still invited and we still gave everyone else the option of watching our wedding through live stream. Eloping does not mean you have to go by yourselves.

5. Less Money

The average UK wedding costs around £17,000. To get married in Las Vegas and to stay there for two weeks cost us £3500 (including our spending money). We had an awesome wedding and an awesome honeymoon rolled into one.

6. Less Stress

Planning a big wedding is hard. You aren’t guaranteed less stress if you elope, but I certainly felt less when I planned our elopement.

7. You don’t have to invite people you don’t like.

I don’t get along well with my mother’s side of the family, if we were to have a big wedding in the UK, I would have had to invite them. They would have had plenty to eat and drink at my expense and probably still spent the day whinging about one thing or another. No thank you.

8. You can focus more on you and your partner.

It is hard to remember why you are getting married when you get bogged down in all of the stress of planning the wedding. With the budget and guest list it can exhaust you both and cause arguments. With eloping you can lose all of that rubbish and concentrate on looking forward to actually being married.

9. You can choose an awesome destination.

If you elope you don’t have to think about everyone else getting to and from the wedding. You can get married anywhere in the world.

10. It doesn’t have to be formal.

If you don’t want a wedding reception afterwards then you don’t have to have one. We just went to a restaurant and had a burger after our wedding, and it was perfect for us.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure it is right for you. Don’t be pressured into what everyone else wants.

Have a lovely wedding, but most importantly, have a long and happy marriage.