My husband and I eloped at an old hotel in the French Quarter in New Orleans. The day of our wedding, we walked up the street to a flower shop and the nice owner made me a bouquet of various flowers. The day that we were leaving to come home, we mailed an wedding announcement/invitation for everyone to join us at our home to celebrate a couple of weeks later. It’s been 10 years and we’ve never regretted it. It’s a great story and we had a lot of fun at our party.

We had a hybrid wedding. We got married in Salt Spring Island, BC one year after seriously considering eloping (we tried to get married there and then, but SSI didn’t have the offices we needed to get the marriage certificate and we were leaving the next day). My generous parents, who used to live in the Seattle area thought the destination idea was great and offered to pay to fly out immediate family for a vacation wedding. A total of 7 of us flew to Seattle for a couple of days and saw where my parents lived, then drove up to Vancouver then eventually ferried over to SSI. My parents rented a large farm house for the week, we got married on a Monday in a garden and Mark and I spent 3 days at a great little resort away from the family while they vacationed (we paid for the “honeymoon” part of our trip). We rejoined them for 2 nights, drove back to Seattle and flew home to Ohio.

A month later, as part of the agreement with my parents Mark and I hosted a reception which we paid for (with a little help from dad on the booze because all we could afford was beer and wine - he wanted top shelf so he paid the difference). It was a cocktail reception with hors d’œuvres for about 100 so the price wasn’t too bad. And we had fun, even if there were people we were forced to invite. Plus, I wore my wedding dress again!

Anyway, I wouldn’t do anything different. I kept thinking during the recpetion that I was SO GLAD I didn’t have to do the hostess thing right after our wedding. We were able to really enjoy the party and cut loose. And I realized that while I was totally chill about planning the actaul wedding 3000 miles away, I became a crazy bridzilla over the reception details. Have the 2 be a month apart helped keep the wedding day calm and enjoyable.

Plus we now have “our place” to visit every few years on our anniversary. We’ve been back to Salt Spring 3x and we had hoped to go back this summer to celebrate our 10th but with the new baby arriving I think we are going to have to push it back a year (sob!!)

Neither Thom nor I have parents that were in any position to help with the wedding. So we did what we could afford. We flew to Las Vegas and got married at the top of the Stratosphere. We also stayed at that hotel. Three days later we came home married and two weeks later we had a catered reception (Mexican food!) at my sister’s house and invited about 50 people. We bought a dvd of the wedding at played it at the reception. We registered at Target and got pretty much everything we needed at the party.

My sister got married the year before me. And while I was a little jealous of her medium sized, fairly fancy wedding, I felt like I had experienced that with her and didn’t need it for myself. Her husband left her three years later and I’m fairly certain if she marries again she will elope.

We wanted to elope but as soon as we got engaged my Mom gave me a lecture about how much eloping would hurt her feelings. It was ridiculous. We ended up having the wedding - and it was a lot of fun - but I wish that we had just gone somewhere sunny with a group of close friends and family.

I will either elope or have a super small (destination or family only) wedding. My mother even asked me if I’d elope (after my brother got married). I told her no problem. I’m not interested in planning a wedding and neither is my Mom. I’d rather spend my money on the honeymoon or a new house.
I have a friend who is getting married in May and I told her she was my hero! She is having a small wedding ceremony for her family and then having a picnic style BBQ at her parents house. I told her she was having my dream wedding.

We considered a destination wedding (a pure elopement without any family present wasn’t really something we were interested in), but in the end it seemed important to us to have our priests marry us in the church where we met, witnessed by all the family and friends who wanted to join us in the town we lived in at that point.

We didn’t have to cut every corner — we consciously saved more money to pay for the wedding so that it wasn’t as much work for us — and given that, I’m extremely grateful for the awesome day, surrounded by all the awesome people my husband and I have been priveleged to have in our lives over the years.

Our wedding day was one of the best days of our lives and we planned and paid for the whole shindig (of about 120) ourselves with a little help from our family (they mostly helped make all the food). The beef for the lasagna was a wedding gift from my cowboy brother in law.

We had an absolute blast and our only regrets were that we didn’t listen to our parents a bit more regarding who we should invite (since we were paying for it ourselves that was our excuse to not take their advice). We invited a bunch of friends we never see now instead of a bunch of cousins we see more often but felt like we didn’t know as well.

My only other regret was my bad updo. Boo. Everything else was fabulous, memorable…and we made all our money back and then some with all those gifts!!! I highly recommend the at home wedding (and the near home honeymoon too actually…save that far away exotic trip for when well, you don’t find your mate quite so um… exotic?)

I love the idea of eloping if I were ever to get married, but I can’t handle the heat, so that rules out almost everywhere! Other than that, it would be tiny, in Sam’s parents backyard, or my mom’s backyard. I’m not a big fan of stressful, late, intricate parties!