Clearing the air on elopements

This is a short note on elopements because I have a whole other book I’m writing on the whole deal, but in planning a wedding, I wanted to be sure to all reading this about how a wedding is different to an elopement.

What is an elopement?

An elopement is not a wedding. An elopement is not a small wedding, an intimate wedding, a micro wedding, or an elopement wedding.

A wedding is a wedding, and you’re not going to believe this, an elopement is an elopement.

Here is how they differ:

• A wedding is an event you host for your favourite people. Although you have professionals doing the hosting, it’s an event you host and invite people to. As much as it’s your wedding, it’s for them.

• An elopement is for you. Other people, like close friends and family, might attend, but it’s not for them. An elopement is more like a birthing space. Not everyone gets an invite, it’s a sacred and intimate space where we craft a marriage without the spotlight and the pizzazz.

Both are great options, but you can’t fit a wedding into an elopement and you can’t stretch an elopement into a wedding. They are different events with different purposes and different intentions.

You probably already know if one or the other is for you, it’s not for me to move you either way. That’s our commitment at The Elopement Collective, my wife’s elopement company. We actively turn people away because they don’t want to elope, they maybe want to spend less on a wedding, or they might want to buy a packaged wedding. Those people are who I’m writing this book for - if you’re going to have a wedding, have an intentional wedding.

An elopement would be one of the most intentional getting-married decisions you can make, but it’s not a wedding.