We Eloped & Why
Floral: Bloom Theory Studio; Connie Nutt
Photography: Alexis Caroline Photography
If you follow me or Alex on social media, you’ll know that we eloped on Thursday, February 20, 2020. If you do not follow us, we eloped on Thursday, February 20, 2020!
Why?
Preparing for this wedding was stress-free and went so smoothly. We had first talked about the idea of eloping late last year because we wanted something intimate and financially responsible. Every time we sat down to plan an actual wedding ceremony, it felt like we needed to try to please everyone and we weren’t really taking our own preferences into consideration. We are both private people when it comes to our relationship and love and being that center of attention during a wedding could be nice but my goal throughout all of this was to not lose sight of the reason for the ceremony. Losing sight of the ceremony is such a fine line because brides are responsible for so much of the planning and they can take on so much unnecessary stress and I am a professional when it comes to taking on stress and I needed to protect that part of myself so we could have our best day together.
I’ve heard so many horror stories of huge weddings gone wrong and so many brides regret certain things or look back and regret their wedding day because they took it as their job to make everyone happy and not focus on what the day was actually about: the bride and the groom celebrating their relationship. Not that our wedding would have come down to this and be full of drama, but I didn’t even like sitting and planning it because of the stressful feelings that came along with the planning. And then stories of people who are in the weddings- I honestly did not know that bridesmaids and groomsmen had to pay for their own attire until like 2 years ago! My friend has been in 6 weddings and just thinking about the amount of money spent on other weddings- all of that could probably pay for her own elopement and honeymoon! I am just too frugal when it comes to things like shopping even (for clothes at least) that it would be difficult for me to narrow down my own desires for an entire bridal party because all we wanted was the most financially responsible event for everyone involved.
When making out our invite list and deciding on the number of guests, we realized that some venues were specific about the different levels of amounts so we were a few over 100 guests but we couldn’t book for 150 unless we had 150 guests and the conversation about who to invite and who to not invite was a tad stressful because we want who we want at our wedding and didn’t want to fill empty seats with random people. And we also didn’t want some people to have to drive 3-4 hours just to attend the wedding because that felt selfish to us. And to offer a place to stay at a cabin in North Georgia that was one of our venue options was so overpriced and to ask our guests to spend that money didn’t seem fair to us. We wanted to be able to take care of everything for our guest and our wedding party but taking care of everything was not in our budget.
As for food, we would have needed to cater to the to my side of the family as well as his so we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have Chicfila and pizza and wings. The kids would love it and so would the adults, and so would we (because who could pass down chicfila). However, if we had a venue, we would have to pay for the catering package and their fancy food that probably isn’t as tasty as we wanted; if we wanted to bring our own food, there was a fee of like $1800 to not use their catering. At that point we might as well use their catering, and this is the same with the photography and floral designs and I’m really particular about that kind of stuff. DIY wedding venues were overpriced, I’m guessing because it is a DIY venue so you have to pay to be able to have that kind of control. We had three coffee dates to discuss venues and had no luck with any of it.
It was just a lot of different things that weren’t as important to us as a couple and we saw some things as unnecessary spending that we, personally, did not need in our lives. We have so many plans for the future and the art business that we never wanted to look back on it and think that we would have rather done without a big, financially-crippling wedding. Not to knock anyone who wants a big wedding to celebrate their love and marriage because we are more than happy to support anyone and help anyone reach their goals and fulfill their needs- it just wasn’t in the book of desires for us. Maybe in the future if we want, then we’ll renew our vows and have an actual wedding with friends and family if that is what our life is calling for, but I think we had much more fun with this care-free elopement than we would have had even with a small wedding because all we had to worry about was ourselves and isn’t that what all of this is about?
The wedding AND honeymoon were so much greater than we could imagine and the rings are paid off and we owe no debts to anything wedding-related and now we are able to begin our lives together with a new slate and work towards everything else our future has in store for us.
We are so thankful for all of the support and gifts and we can’t wait to continue to have small celebrations with everyone in our circle.
I will be posting the details in my next blog about how and where we spent our money as well as a yummy food/coffeeshop post journaled throughout our trip.
Thank you and much love,
Britni and Alex