Be ready for hurt feelings: 8 lessons learned from eloping

Comments on Be ready for hurt feelings: 8 lessons learned from eloping

1. “If your relationship with family is lacking clear personal boundaries, which is causing problems in your wedding planning, I doubt eloping is going to make that better. Actually, it may make it worse.”

   Thank you for this! I really needed to hear it. There are lots of days when I want to just toss out all our ideas, let go of our deposits, and run off to the courthouse alone–because of family complications. But it would probably leave things feeling just as difficult.

   • Hi, this is Jenny! Glad you liked my post. And yes, I think working through these things with your family now that you’re in the planning stage is really the way to go. We eloped because it was right for us. But I think everyone should have the right wedding for them. Good luck in your planning!!!

   • Same boat.. only 2 weeks after being engaged. Tough thing is that I had told my fiance over a year ago that I want to elope, so the desire is getting stronger rather than diminishing now that we have an actual wedding date in sight. This advice makes complete sense though, and seeing how much drama my parents have ALREADY caused, I can see how much worse it might get if we actually did elope.. Hope you work/ed your stuff out!

   • We are going to Vegas. Alot of hot air going on.. we have kept it Hush only my kids and mom knew Tomorrow we leave. I am making a book. I am gonna have several copies. and it will be sitting in my house waiting for someone to visit us that would have a problem. They will get Their copy when they visit

2. I am eloping on our tenth anniversary. My parents are very laidback casual people who have always supported me with every single thing I have done in life. There is no way they’d be upset I had the wedding I want. I am so excited to call them after the ceremony!

   • Congrats! I know it was so exciting for us to send out the big reveal after the ceremony. So much fun to add some surprise to a day that is usually planned months or years in advance. And I really do recommend having a fun way to make the call to your parents. My mom just kept saying “Jenny… is this?… really? Oh my gosh!!!!” Super fun and memorable!

   • Another perspective : We have 2 adult sons. The eldest announced last week at a dinner out (with his new bride) that they’d been married the day before at the courthouse. We are a very close family. (He came to us to tell us ahead of time when they decided to live together over a yr. ago. No drama. No judgment. We love her.) So we celebrated at the restaurant – we’d never ruin that for them, but I could barely eat and inside I was in shock. We are laid back as well however hurt that we were left out of this milestone in his (their) lives. We’re not the kind of parents that would criticize where or how they would get married – we just wanted to witness the event.

3. There’s something SO romantic about eloping! I am currently looking for officiants and one of the officiants listed “meet me at the gazebo” as a service. We probably won’t take him up on that offer but it did bring a little tear to my eye. I worry that my wedding (with its 200-some-odd guests and 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen and great aunt so-and-so and that guy from high school and yada yada yada) will lack that intimacy. I’m unlikely to get ‘loped (unless we do it Pam & Jim pre-wedding style) but there is definitely something about it that you can’t get in a “regular” wedding. Or maybe I’m just romanticizing. 🙂

   I also really like what you said here about saying the same vows as the other couples and being part of something bigger. And I’m in love with your dress. 🙂

   • I think there was something romantic in our elopement as well! It was nice to focus just on us and not on all the other stuff that regular weddings have. We’ll still do that in a big party back home this fall. That officiant sounds like fun, too. Maybe still look into them for your wedding if they have that fun, spontaneous vibe! And thank you– my dress was from ModCloth. It’s the Adrift on a Cloud dress, and if you look at the comments I’m not the first to wear it for a wedding. 🙂

4. I’m not sure I’d have any good advice for eloping couples. After having my wedding with everybody, I learned that one of my friends that had helped out significantly with the decor and was a bridesmaid had eloped with her husband and didn’t tell anyone until 3 months after the event. Apparently, they had gotten married about a month before my wedding and just didn’t want anyone to know.

   I was incredibly hurt that they had kept such big news from me and after all her help, I wasn’t even going to have a chance to help with her own celebrations.

   I guess my only good advice is to tell people as soon as it happens. I’ve had other friends elope, but the only real difference is that they told everyone the day of or after and showed off amazing pictures. I guess my bridesmaid just didn’t want to share, but I was still very hurt that it seemed she didn’t want me involved as much as I liked having her involved.

   • Trust that your bridesmaid did what she had to do and did it her way. I understand your hurt, but that’s about you, not about her. It’s beautiful that she helped you and that you were willing to help her, but in the end, it’s her wedding, her news, and her marriage. 🙂

     I have a closest friend who got married with their pastor’s wife as the only witness. I wish that I could have been with them and totally would have been there but I totally respect that this is how they wanted their wedding day to be. My hurt-ish feelings aren’t important to them when they think about their day.

     So love her. Bless her and her new husband. Be happy for them and allow them to live their lives on their terms.

     And peace to you! 🙂

     • I think it’s time for a heart to heart conversation between these two friends.

       While I agree that the bridesmaid’s elopement is about her, not her friends, I think it is appropriate for the secret eloper’s friend to feel hurt. She was deceived by her friend. Maybe her friend had good reasons for that, too, but unless she cares enough about her friendship to connect with her friend, it is perfectly reasonable for her friend to decide that their level of friendship may not be what she had assumed.

       As you said, KT, your hurtish feelings don’t matter to them on their big day. If that is the case, absolutely fine,but that says something about your level of friendship. It is perfectly reasonable and possible for a friend to respect her friend’s choice to elope and not share the news, and at the same time to re-evaluate the nature of the friendship.

     • I agree, your marriage is about you and your spouse, and if you both decided to get married in secret and elope, that’s your business. I got married in secret because my family and my husbands family is negative and dysfunctional. Everyone is controlling and makes everything about them. It’s sickening. When we got married, we didn’t tell anyone and when we finally did, we could have done a reality show with all the drama. My husband’s sisters were so upset, and one of them said, “how could you do that to me”. Another sister said, “I wanted your wedding colors to be blue and I wanted to serve this kind of food at your wedding”, she wanted to plan the wedding and never asked what I wanted. If someone is hurt or upset because you got married without telling them, that’s about them, not about you. I am also older, and so is my husband, this is our first marriage, we were in our late forties. I am glad I waited that long and I am glad I got married the way I did. Please live your life and live and let live.

5. #8 is the reason my husband and I didn’t elope.

   I had always pictured myself eloping if I ever got married. Like always, even as a kid. It always seemed so sexy, focused on the couple, and all about the marriage and less the party. My parents are of the “follow your heart” variety so they would have supported an elopement all the way.

   However, after getting serious with my then boyfriend/now husband I quickly realized he (and by extension me) did not have the kind of relationship with his parents that would allow for an elopement. After getting engaged we both wholeheartedly agreed that the stress of planning a wedding (that was viewed by many as a “family reunion”) was better then mending the hurt feelings of his mom and dad if we had eloped.

   • This is definitely true of my family. Luckily we didn’t go into this wanting to elope because I think there would have been a lot of disappointment from them. We have a big family (14 first cousins on my Dad’s side) and though I’m not the oldest, I’m the first to get married in nearly 10 years. Another cousin got married during that time, but he eloped and there was a lot of unhappy muttering about it from family members who wanted to celebrate with them.

     I have mixed feelings about the “wedding-as-family-reunion” phenomenon. On the one hand, I love that nearly all of my family will be coming, and a big part of the joy of the day will be all of us gathering together from all around the world for the first time in a while. Family is a monumentally important part of the wedding.

     However, I also think that attitude leads to not-so-great feelings of entitlement on the part of family members who see it as a generously funded party for the purpose of catching up. While I don’t want to fall down the “It’s MY day!” rabbit-hole, it really is a day to celebrate the next step in my fiance’s and my relationship, not a weekend social. I also think that sense of entitlement extends to more distant family members who would probably be invited to a reunion, but weren’t invited to our wedding because we hardly know them – and subsequently made a big fuss about how they were being excluded.

     • I got married yesterday at a big family wedding (over 110 guests). My partner and I had several heart-to-hearts during the planning process about what exactly we wanted and elopement came up several times, but his father eloped with his third wife and announced their marriage at a family BBQ after the event. Loads of people were hurt by it and he didn’t want to repeat that. And there were people we genuinely wanted to involve, so in the end we bit the bullet. I hated wedding planning and I had loads of nightmares in the run up to the wedding of ceremonies going wrong or my mum hijacking everything, but in the end the day was amazing. We got really lucky because everyone came with a really positive attitude (possibly helped by the unexpectedly good weather) so even my mum (who’s against the marriage in the first place) had a great day.

       I am cool with the family reunion aspect of a big wedding. A big part of the planning the day was trying to make sure everyone was having a good time even if we weren’t directly involved. There was no way we would be able to talk to everyone properly and we enjoyed the fact that we were bringing together various people who hadn’t seen each other in ages (sometimes many years). I think we got lucky though as we didn’t have to deal with entitlement issues (we only had two instances of people wanting to bring other people when we didn’t have space and they were both fine about it when we said no).

       I’m really glad that we thought seriously about elopement though. It helped us think about our priorities and expectations, and I think if any of my friends or family choose to elope in future I will understand their choice better.

     • I also come from a large family: 28 first cousins, god-only-knows how many second cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts/uncles, holy crow. I could keep the local post office afloat on the invites alone. And my dad’s side recently suffered a devastating suicide, and frankly, we all need a reason to party.

       That being said, my partner and I are going to elope next month. We’ll keep the big party next year as planned, but for legal/financial/intimacy/introverted reasons, we’ll do the legal stuff this year. We’ll have a quick mini ceremony on our first year anniversary, and party down with our loved ones, but taking the onus of the ceremony out of the proceedings allows us to throw a more laid back party, and takes the sting out of the ‘it’s a family reunion, not a wedding’ vibe.

   • My parents would’ve been crushed if I’d eloped.
     My brother and his fiancée are going to Hawaii to elope (really more of a pseudo-destination wedding at this point) and told everyone beforehand -my mother still isn’t really over it. Some of her family is able to go, but no one on his side will be able to attend.
     When I confronted him about it, that it was unfair and devastating our mother- it basically ended our relationship because he’s a condescending little sh!t. Oh, but he told me I could still go to the reception afterward ( to collect our presents, I’m sure)–I didn’t answer, he can kindly take a detour to Hell on his way there!

     • In my opinion, your brother’s wedding is not “unfair” to your mother, because the bottom line is that it has nothing to do with her, and everything to do with your brother and his new wife. Like everyone else has said, there will be hurt feelings, but the people who love that couple will find a way to show it, even if they hurt for a while. I hope that your family can feel some peace with the decisions that the two of them have made regarding their own wedding.

6. Totally be ready for hurt feelings. Oh my ever loving lord the hurt feelings…

   But my advice is also make sure that you’re doing what you REALLY want to do. If you want to elope, you can do it in a courthouse or at a destination. It can be completely spontaneous or as well planned out as the OP’s wedding. You can bring your parents or a friend or no one. And if you don’t REALLY want to elope, if you’re just doing it for ease of wedding planning or to avoid family drama, don’t do it. You’ll probably end up disappointed.

7. We were married in the same courthouse! Woohoo! I saw this as the top post on OBB and thought, “I recognize that quilt backdrop!”

   Congratulations and thank you for the advice. I second the recommendation to make a list of people you want to personally share the news with. I unfortunately forgot to tell one of my best friends who lives out of state, and when I casually used the term “husband” last week (3 months after the elopement), she felt hurt that I’d waited so long to tell her. We talked it out and she’s overjoyed for us, but it was my bad to forget to tell her.

   • That’s awesome! Congrats to you too! What made our announcement totally funny was that we couldn’t get in touch with his parents that day. My parents, no problem. But he called his multiple times, finally gave up and called his sister, so then she was trying to call them, too. But no luck! We finally talked to them around noon the next day. Hahaha! But we didn’t want to tell any friends or extended family before we talked to parents/siblings. So that cut down a tad of our “announcement” time for others.

8. Thank you so much for the advice!
   My boyfriend and I have gone back and forth about surprise eloping. While it’s something I would totally love to do, I’m not so sure our families will appreciate it. We each have a parent who likes to pull guilt trips when they “didn’t get to” be invited/involved/whatever. But, I’m very much of the mind that a wedding ceremony should be about the commitment of the couple to each other. I feel like vow speaking and commitment making is a very intimate thing (Frankly, I’m not so sure I *want* to indulge in that intimacy with an audience watching.) One day, the waffle will land on one side or another…

   • Hi Michele, glad you found the post useful! It’s a big decision to make and there are a lot of different things to weigh on both sides. I didn’t go into our reasons for eloping in this post, but it was a personal decision that was right for us. Like I said above, communicating out the decision (before or after) is key. Something I didn’t mention is that we’re having a big ol’ celebration back in our hometown in the fall, so everyone still gets to celebrate with us. But there are many ways to elope, as Cassie said above. You could have a private ceremony with just your immediate family and then a big reception. So there are definitely ways to keep family involved in the day and planning, while still keeping the vow speaking and commitment intimate. 🙂

   • Some other options for you:
     Bring only the “guilt trip” parents with you to elope
     Have a very small wedding
     Have a private elopement and then get weddinged
     Have a non-legal vow-exchange ceremony with just the two of you before your legal wedding
     Go on a trip to a place with no waiting period and “just happen” to get married while you’re there. Then you can say you didn’t invite anyone because you didn’t know you would get married on that trip. Of course, that option involves lying, which you may or may not be okay with doing.

     • Thank you for the input Cassie and famous jenny! I appreciate it a lot!

   • For our civil wedding ceremony the legal words we had to include were pretty nondescript, so it might be worth checking requirements and see if that’s something you’re willing to do in front of a big bunch of people, and the two of you can do something completely private with more personal vows? I also like Jenny’s suggestion of a private ceremony with a reception for friends and family after. Good luck with whatever you choose 🙂

9. Very much THIS to this entire post!

   While #8 definitely should get extra consideration/preparation, it’s also really worthwhile to get your ducks in a row about #6 as well. Even if your ceremony is entirely spur-of-the-moment, take a few minutes to talk out your communication plan and make 100% sure you’re both on the same page about sharing your awesome news. If it’s at all possible, make a list beforehand of people you absolutely must call or tell in person (because you’re likely to be riding a cloud of WOOT afterwards and that’s not usually the best mindset for administration). Make sure that whole list gets checked off before sharing with others. Eloping already has a tendency to elicit some hurt feelings, but making sure that your nearest and dearest have all the details can mitigate the additional awkwardness/hurt if one of those selfsame loved ones should find out from another person or, even worse, from Facebook.

   Also, I can further vouch that eloping can be deeply personal and meaningful. While it’s not for everyone, it’s definitely a worthwhile option to consider.

   Eloping definitely worked for us! http://offbeatwed.com/2013/06/hawaii-elopement

10. Real talk — my fiancé and I are eloping in two weeks. We’re both super excited, but related to number 6, we realized yesterday that we might have a slight hiccup in how we announce the news. I wanted to tell my parents at the same time, in person (we live close enough where this is possible). We had originally planned on just going over to their house for dinner and telling them then. However my dad has recently taken a job where he can only come home about once a month, which means that for us to tell everyone together in person, we would have to wait till 3 weeks after the actual elopement, which contradicts all the “tell everyone asap!” advice. So… now what? Tell them as soon as we come back, while my dad is working away from home? Or wait till we can get everyone together, which might take weeks? Haaaaalllp.

    • Is your Dad going to be completely incommunicado while he’s away? Would it be possible to have him be on the phone/Skype while you’re making the announcement to everyone else in person? Would he, personally, likely be upset if he were not physically there or would he just be glad to get the news ASAP?

      If the former is the likely scenario, then it seems like you’re better off keeping mum for a couple weeks (honestly, anyone who gets upset that you held out in order to include your father in the announcement would likely be upset no matter what you guys did). If, however, you think your dad would be ok hearing the news remotely, then dial him in and tell your loved ones when you get back.

      Good luck and congrats!

11. My husband and I didn’t elope. My brother and his wife did and it took a while for some people to get over it. We never seriously considered eloping because I really wanted my family there on our wedding day. My MIL said that her only request was that if went to city hall to get married that she be invited.

    • My dad said the same thing 🙂 I’d been telling my family since before I met boyfriend-turned fiance-turned husband that I would probably elope. My dad always said, “That’s fine, as long as I can come along.”

      • I think it’s good for parents (and other people) to express their expectations. We were pretty sure that my MIL would be upset if we eloped (especially since my inlaws were giving us money for a wedding) and when we jokingly mentioned it she said that she just wanted to be invited (my FIL didn’t care if he was invited though). There was a day (before we were even engaged) where we joke about just getting married that day (actually tagging onto another wedding) and my MIL asked how long it would take for my dad to get there (he lives 8 hours away so that idea was nixed – not to mention that it was a saturday and we didn’t have a marriage licence and the office was closed). I have always known that if I was going to get married that I wanted a wedding with at least my dad and siblings in attendence so even a city hall wedding would have involved planning to accomodate travel (my brother lives 7 hours away and my sister lives on the other side of the country).

12. Number 4 caught me off guard, too. I expected family to be the ones with all the feels, but it was our unmarried friends. The married friends were all high five! awesome! go you! and maybe a bit secretly jealous 🙂 I think that you don’t really get how screwed up the mix of family, money, and cultural expectations can be with weddings until you go through it.

    For number 6, we mailed elopement announcements. It was a last minute thought which I wasn’t convinced was the best idea. However, it was totally fun. Being secretly married for a few days waiting for everyone’s snail mail to get there was fun, and getting individual calls and texts from all out folks was also an unexpected bonus. It gave us a bit of time that was spread out to reconnect with our favorite people over our surprise.

13. Reading this I realized that I think my parents would be fine with me eloping, BUT if I start planning a party they would want input on who is invited. Hm.

    (for the most part I don’t care, if they are willing to pay for certain people)

14. I’m looking up elopement as a possibility for myself and my partner due mostly in part to my mother, who is very unlike me. She’s highly traditional – I’m 28 and is of the opinion I should have squeezed out two kids with a husband who would provide for everything. Oh, and the both of us having a religious ceremony (with the requirement my partner had converted in the first place).

    I can’t seem to talk around this last point with my mother as she is very staunchly pigheaded about it and doesn’t think I have thought about the religious side of it at all (I haven’t because unbeknownst to her, I’m actually atheistic. Telling her this straight would result in so much more drama not just directed at me, but the rest of my family, mostly my dad).

    Eloping wouldn’t solve anything between myself and my mum, I realise. But at the moment, with her not accepting how I want to do things regarding any part of my future, this is the only option I feel I have left. 🙁

15. My wife and I somewhat eloped–my mom was there along with our kids (technically my stepkids)–and my in-laws were a bit surprised that we just had a quick courthouse ceremony. However, I guess partly because this is my wife’s third-go-round with matrimony, they were fine with it and consoled by the fact that when money allows we’ll have an actual wedding party.
    My friends, on the other hand…most of them sent congratulations (I was shameless and put that we got married on Facebook right after the ceremony LOL!) but one friend whose wedding I went to a few years back put in the comments, “Why the hell wasn’t I invited?” Ooops. 😛

16. I am bookmarking this post and will make an effort to refer back to it. We’ve eloped, but we’re not revealing until May. Feeling that I need to have a defense ready…because by the time May rolls around, our friends and family might have forgotten all the times they joked about us just needing to elope.

    • How did it go when did you teld your family?
      we eloped almost 3 months ago and his family visit ( None of our family live in our state) us 2 weeks after we got married, They accepted and were happy about it. I haven’t told my parents because they leave overseas. I am so worried because I don’t know how to tell them. My parents are VERY VERY old school and I haven’t mentioned anything about guys, so I am very scared. I appreciate if you can share your experience.

    • AngelaMelissa – that would be a good opening introduction to your announcement! Say – “Remember when many of you joked about ___ and I eloping? Well, we took you up on it. No Joke!”

      Seeing that you posted this 4 years ago, I sure hope all turned out ok.

17. I’ve only been engaged since Valentine’s of this year and my wedding plans have already done a 180. Originally, we were going to do the big wedding idea, but we kept blanching at the cost of things (the venues cost the amount that we wanted to spend!), then we were doing a small, intimate beach wedding, elopement style. Friends and family are welcome, but they pay their own way. Of course, my fiance’s parents are still pushing for some traditions, but that’s another topic. Anyway, back on topic. Now we’re considering just eloping. It’d make things much easier (and cheaper).

    My mom was surprisingly very okay with the idea and said she’d give us what her and my dad had planned to spend on the wedding itself for our honeymoon. I think her easygoing attitude with it is due to the fact that her and my dad did that when they married. We haven’t broached it with his parents yet, but I don’t see it going over well…at all.

18. If we had eloped, the blow might be softened to friends and family by having a casual party at home such as barbecue, or out to eat dinner at a favorite restaurant. Getting eloped definitely crossed our minds several times 6 months before the wedding!

19. My fiance and I will be quietly eloping two weeks from today, with just my parents along as witnesses. We’re really not planning to make much of it – we haven’t even discussed if we’ll dress up at all, in fact!

    We’re doing it primarily for legal reasons – I’m in the country on a student visa, and so if we wait until next year – which would give us the time to plan the family & friend get-together that we want – we’d have to work it in around my graduation and the expiration of my visa. Taking care of the legal hoopla and starting the application for residency now just makes more sense.

    Still, I find myself worrying about how my fiance’s family will feel about the whole thing, or if some people will feel like there’s no point in coming when we have our celebration next year.

20. This is really awesome, thank you so much for posting this! My Fiancé and I are eloping at the end of July! 11 DAYS <3 We are both extremely excited to elope and run off for a mini vacation. However, we did tell our parents and our close friends about our decision first. This will be marriage #2 for both of us and we feel like this is best for us instead of a big wedding. We did however hire a really amazing photographer to take elopement photos for us. I found the most gorgeous dress at a small boutique in town and him a matching bowtie and suspenders on Etsy. Plus I even made my bouquet and his boutonniere. I think getting to make the little things for the wedding makes it even more special for us. Not really sure if we are going to do an actual elopement party or not? We still haven't really decided about that.

21. My parents eloped in Switzerland in the 70’s, so when we told them we wanted to do the same thing, they were thrilled! Even though we are eloping, everyone is welcome to come… we just don’t intend to host them. Stress free wedding? Yes, please!

22. We are eloping in two weeks time, I am so excited to be marrying my best friend but on the other side I am so anxious at the prospect of upsetting family members who want to be a part of the day. We on the other side of the world from our entire family so it was always going to be difficult to organise anything where everyone could be involved.

23. Eloping seems like a good option. Just thinking about a big wedding is stressful enough. I have atleast 60 guests on my side. That’s just too many people to entertain. But I’m torn. I don’t know if I can face all my friends and relative who are expecting an invite.

24. We just eloped today. Our families knew about it for months, and while they were ecstatic they didn’t say much. Turns out my mom is really gas light-ey about it. So feeling some guilt for not including them and I know I’m going to have to deal with both of our families in that regard. We are having a reception to get the family together at the end of the year. Now I just have to navigate hurt feelings from our parents (everything else went well, though and I don’t regret it). Ultimately it will be okay. I’m happy I’m married and I can’t wait to spend time with my new family. The guilt is tough to swallow though, especially if you have opinionated folks.

25. I originally wanted to elope and then have a big party afterward, but when I found out that the party would cost just as much as a wedding I put down a deposit and started falling in love with the idea of a wedding and seeing all my friends and family in one room celebrating us… then we started to become overwhelmed with the guest list being so small and at the same time family tensions were brewing. I thought that our families would be selfless enough to behave for 4 hours so we could have a memorable and special time, but I was proven wrong. What I thought was going to be a nice lunch with my mom to gush about wedding plans turned into her saying that if she saw my ex-stepdad’s new wife (with whom he cheated on her) there, she’d call her a wh*re. I said, “at my wedding?” and she persisted to say that she would cause a scene. I was devastated. She later took me out to lunch again to tell me that basically she wants me to elope so she doesn’t have to see my ex-stepdad and the new wife without actually saying it. Instead she worded it like “you should do what’s good for you guys.” I thought my dad might be upset not getting to walk his oldest daughter down the aisle, but he was apathetic about it when I brought it up to him. My fiance’s parents said “that sounds like a good idea” when we told them we might elope. My fiance’s dad is married to his mother AND a woman younger than my fiance. They all live in the same house and both have kids by him. It’s a spectacle and embarrassment. So, I have the opposite problem. My family doesn’t care about us more than they care about themselves being uncomfortable for 4 hours, and that hurts. I was supposed get married in less than 6 months now and what used to be good progress on wedding planning has kind of turned into paralysis and an overall defeated demeanor with no clue of what we’re going to do. When someone asks when I’m getting married I don’t light up and say the date anymore. I should be happy.

    My fiance wiped my tears away and assured me that we will be making our own NORMAL family and breaking the chain of both our messed up situations. I love and appreciate him for that. He doesn’t have any opinions on how or where or what we should do to get married. All he knows is he wants me to be happy, but that doesn’t help me figure things out. I feel this crazy pressure. How do you elope? So you get all dressed up and take pictures and get married. Then what? Do you go home? Surely there’s something else you can do. I don’t want to leave town because I have all of my vendors already picked and still plan on getting flowers and photos. Any advice? I suggested to my fiance that we go to a really nice restaurant in our wedding attire afterward and he said, “in our wedding stuff!?” kind of surprised or judgmental about it and I burst into tears on the spot. I have no idea what to do the day of. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks for reading this long rant!

26. We almost had our wedding hijacked by parents until we read this. We are not interested in eloping, but if we were, it shouldn’t be to run away from our parents. After reading #8, I knew we needed to put our foot down and say, “No”. we’re not changing anything to accommodate the parents’ vision for our special day. Thank you so much!

27. What a great link! I really think you had some great points in this one. I’m glad that you mentioned the photographer and how how pictures were so important. My sister actually had a small destination wedding with only small group of people and the hardest part was finding a great photographer. But she did! The main motivation for her to elope was that family was so spread out across the USA that it was hard to choose a destination that would work for everybody. So, they choose one that worked for them! For the loved ones that couldn’t make it she sent special photos from the day they could cherish.

28. Thank you so much for all of this information! My reasons for wanting to elope are that both of my parents and our son have passed and I can’t imagine having a big wedding without them, the mother-in-law, sister-in-law and my sister are all about the drama and we don’t want any of that on our wedding day. My fiancé and I’s relationship with his family is already strained and I know that eloping is only going to make it worse but he keeps telling me that it is completely about us and no one else. We have been through enough in 2 years already and we just want to make it as special as possible with as little drama as possible.

29. **Please let me know how you would feel if this happened to you.**

    My husband and I dated for several years before moving in together, and lived together for almost 10 years before eloping. We don’t have kids. My parents have both passed on, and my husband’s mom has also passed. Although he has step brothers and sisters we aren’t close to them. In his family, he is only close with his Dad and sister.

    Because we are both older, shy, and dread being the center of attention, we decided almost on the spur of the moment to elope. We felt obligated to invite his Dad and sister. We explained we wanted to keep it secret because we didn’t want uninvited people to show up, feel obligated to send gifts, and we would rather tell everyone personally when we got back. They agreed to keep our secret.

    We eloped to our favorite hotel at our favorite coastal town, and they also booked rooms there. My longtime friend is also a licensed minister, so we asked her to officiate. We asked everyone present to please refrain from posting pictures on social media because we didn’t want our secret to get out until we had the opportunity to tell our other friends and family we had eloped. They agreed.

    While we were still taking pictures after the ceremony, my husband’s step mom decided this was the right time to text pictures to her kids (my husbands’s step brothers and sister). I was not happy about this at all. I didn’t say anything because my husband asked me not to, even though he was also upset.

    The day after we got home, we started getting calls from family members congratulating us, after his sister had decided to blab our news.

    So my question to you is, how would it make you feel if someone blabbed your special news and in doing so hurt the feelings of friends and family because they had to hear the news from someone other than you.

    I am not pleased and really want to call out my sister in law and step mother in law on their actions. My husband says to forget about it. What would you do if this happened to you?

30. My husband and I eloped. Ludicrous religious expections from all parents and with my mother being dangerously mentally ill made eloping the right choice. There were no pictures, we did not wear special clothes, we did not invite a soul. No one knew til two weeks after.

    You hear all this “I’m so hurt, I feel deceived, well you could have done X or Y”. . . . At first I let it get to me. But the people saying this were not going to hand over any money to help put on a wedding WE would feel proud of. These people weren’t going to act like adults and respect what WE wanted from a wedding. These people, hell, some of them wouldn’t call 911 if I were on fire.

    We’re going to renew our vows, and it’s going to be the exact same. No guests, no photos, no giving a damn what anyone thinks.

    Is that too harsh for some couples? Perhaps, but it makes me and the husband happy, so it’s all that matters.

31. For my part? We are eloping because my parents refuse to pay, his father hates me because I’m not German, his mother is too afraid of her husband to stand up for me and is frankly a big entitled brat, they are both racists and addicts who would be inviting drunk/racist/KKK/alcoholic/addicts/drug dealers/biker gangs/people neither of us know nor like/her parents who abused HER and controlled HER first wedding and have never even acknowledged my fiance, and on top of it they do not have the money to pay for the event to begin with. I do not want them there. I’m her paid caregiver and frankly on OUR day I do not feel like wheeling around a wheedling, self pitying brat who tells me that if I want health insurance I should dump her son, and marry a rich old man like SHE did. I have been called a wh*re, a gold-digger, a c*nt, a b*tch, the N word, lazy, scheming, meddling and worse by my future father in law and the most she does is beg him to be nice to me to my face (he is abusive to her but she defends and protects him). I don’t care if their feelings, their precious feelings get hurt. They are grown ups and if they’re so drug and booze addled that their precious feelings are more important than our happiness? Too bad.

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