We eloped and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made

7 reasons to elope

When we got engaged, we immediately started thinking about the wedding.

We wanted to be married, but a traditional wedding was just not our vibe. Whilst we love attending other people’s wedding, we also always talked about how uncomfortable we would feel if we were hosting our own wedding. All the planning, the stress, the expense, the build-up, the attention, family politics, table plans, stag dos, hen dos. It just didn’t appeal to us. We decided we were wedding goers, not wedding throwers!

We considered going to our local registry office to get married, but it wasn’t something we felt particularly excited about so we never got round to booking it. Whilst we knew we didn’t want a big traditional wedding; we did want something – we just weren’t quite sure what yet.

We didn’t decide to elope until we came across the perfect venue (which I’ll share details of in my next post). When we spoke about eloping before we always concluded it wasn’t for us. We worried about upsetting people and that the girls would miss out on a “proper” wedding experience.

We imagined an elopement as us running off and getting married with a queue of couples behind us about to do the same thing in the same place. We envisioned a large building that made our little wedding feel lonely. Maybe we could marry on a beach abroad, but then we would still need to marry in a registry office for the marriage to be legally recognised. We didn’t want to do it twice.

As time passed, we started to wonder if we should just have a normal traditional wedding after all. We could just do it on a smaller scale and perhaps it would feel OK. The marriage was the important part.

We searched online again, specifically looking for smaller venues, and a beautiful venue popped up that we hadn’t come across before. It was an elopement venue but it was so different to any we’d seen before. Eloping suddenly became a serious option. We made spoke about the pros and cons, and we quickly realised that eloping (with the girls) made perfect sense for us.

We went ahead and booked our elopement wedding, and it turned out to be the most magical, beautiful and intimate day.  

There are many reasons people choose to elope. In case it is something you are considering too, or maybe you are just looking for something different to a traditional big wedding, here are some of the things that came up for us when we were making the decision.

The Expense (for you)

Cost is probably one of the biggest considerations when planning any wedding so naturally it’s first on this list.

Even if you’re not intending to have an extravagant wedding, according to hitched.co.uk, the average cost of a wedding in 2023 was £20,700. If you’ve never been quoted by a wedding supplier you might wonder how that could be, but if you’ve had quotes for anything to do with a wedding – you’ll understand the maths! In all the planning and expectation, it’s easy to become desensitised to the actual amount of money that your spending. But it’s important not to.

For most of us anything near £20,000 is a lot of money to spend on one day and, considering even the most basic wedding packages easily run into thousands of pounds, it might not even be enough for the wedding of your dreams. It could however be enough for a deposit on a house, a new car or a dream holiday. Or for an absolutely incredible elopement destination …

We just could not justify the cost of a traditional big wedding, so we went much smaller.

The Expense (for others)

Weddings are also a big expense for guests – outfits, gifts and accommodation are fairly typical expenses. It can run into much more expenditure for destination weddings. Sometimes there are multiple hen parties and stag parties. Parents are often expected to contribute.

Life is expensive enough. We didn’t want our wedding, our celebration of love and family, to become an expense for anyone other than ourselves.

Freedom and authenticity

It’s simply much easier to choose the wedding you want when you don’t have lots of guests to think about. You can do whatever you want to do, wherever you want to do it. You’re free to choose without having to consider anyone other than each other.

We realised we could plan something completely different and authentic to us as individuals and as a couple and as a family. So that’s what we did.

Intimacy and privacy

Traditional weddings are typically big social events, an all-day affair with little alone time. This is wonderful in its own way and lots of people love this kind of gathering, but it’s not for everyone. You’ll spend a lot of time greeting people and making small talk, spreading yourself across your guests to ensure you spend time with everyone.

You may want to write your own vows, but not feel comfortable sharing them with everybody. You may find it difficult to be present because you’re so busy and trying to fit so much into a short amount of time.

Elopements are naturally much more private and intimate, and we valued those aspects. We wanted to have the time and space to be present and take it all in, and an elopement felt like the best way to make that happen.

Less planning

Holding a traditional wedding requires a lot of planning, big to do lists and lots of decision making over a prolonged period – all on top of the usual day to day stress.

Whilst you still need to plan for an elopement wedding, and there may be different things to consider (such as how and when you will announce your wedding), planning for an elopement is generally much easier and quicker than planning a traditional wedding.

It’s all the fun of planning (if you find planning fun!) on a much smaller scale and without a mass of people to factor into your decisions.

We simply liked the idea of planning on a smaller scale.

Sustainability

Traditional weddings (like a lot of events) are wasteful and leave a footprint. There are some things that can be repurposed – you can dry your bouquet, you can donate/sell table decorations – but if you think of everything that will be disposed of after a typical wedding it’s hard to ignore how much waste is produced for a single day. Food waste, napkins, stationery, wedding favours, single use decorations, flowers.

Wherever you choose to marry, a small elopement wedding will produce much less waste than a typical wedding.  

That said, we weren’t actually thinking about the environment specifically when we decided to elope. We just found it depressing to think about so much time, effort and money being spent on things that will be disposed of almost immediately after the wedding.

Drama

Traditional weddings often involve bringing together different groups of people from different areas of your life. Immediate family, extended family, mum friends, childhood friends, university friends, work friends.

Even if there are no issues between any of your guests, some people find the idea of bringing people from different branches of their life together for one event too overwhelming to enjoy.

However, if there are unresolved issues between your guests prior to your wedding day – if there’s family drama or friendship problems bubbling in the background - a traditional wedding (with traditional emotions and traditional alcohol intake) can very quickly bring things to the surface.

We had a few concerns, and eloping provided a solution.