Anyone here elope?
 

I'm getting married but don't really want a conventional wedding. To be honest, me and my fiancé don't really like weddings :lol:

We are musicians and having played at a lot of weddings, it has sort of put us off. However, we do still want to get married.

We are swinging between having a small do in my parents back garden (but unfortunately stupid UK laws prevent us from getting married outside) and I am fantasizing about just the two of us getting married on a beach in another country :dizzy:

Anyone have any unique and unconventional ideas?

We want a laid back casual deal, and on a budget too. Thanks in advance for any input :)

You can't get married outside in the UK?? That's crazy! Have you thought about making your wedding also a honeymoon? Like get married on a cruise, or an island? I always have wanted to go to Hawaii, and get married on the beach. Send out some invites to my closest family/friends, and whoever shows up, great! If it is only us, great!

We ended up getting married in a small church. It was beautiful, and I'm happy we did so.

You can get married outside but it must be under a fixed roof, and not a temporary one! Silly I know.

I like your idea about the joint wedding/honeymoon. I looked into getting married somewhere abroad but many places seem to require you to be in the country for seven days before you wed, which I wouldn't really want to do.

Also, what do you do with your family after they've flown all that way to be with you? I don't really fancy spending my honeymoon with them :lol:

Do you have the ability of going to the local courthouse and getting married?

My husband and I had a small wedding. We had it at a small chapel that was used just for weddings but you could make the wedding as big or small as you wanted. Then we went to dinner at a local italian place for the reception. It was great.

Our local courthouse is kind of depressing :o I know, I'm a little hard to please. I had a look there though and it was really dark and dingy.

Your wedding sounds lovely, I like the idea of going to a restaurant afterwards. I've been thinking about either doing that or having a barbecue after at home...

It's not so much the reception (not sure if you call it that in America, I mean the post-ceremony party) that I am struggling with - as we could just hold that in a garden. It's the actual ceremony place that I'm stuck with. I'd just like somewhere nice and cheap, but maybe a little quirky, you know? Something unusual.

I don't know, we'll probably just get married somewhere ordinary but I just thought I'd throw it out there in case. Thanks for the help so far and I'm interested to hear how others tied the knot :)

What we did may be smaller than you want to do, but we just secretly arranged with our minister to perform a private ceremony at our church-we really hated the whole idea of spending money we didn't have just to try to please family. DH had been married before, both of us had divorced parents, and mine lived 12 hours away, so trying to get everyone together just seemed to be an impossible task. We each had our witnesses, and DH's son was there (he had custody) and we hired a photographer, then had a small dinner at our house for everyone who had been there. One of our witnesses videotaped it, so we could show everyone later. We sent out cute 'elopement' announcements and no one was mad at us-in fact, I think most of them were relieved that they didn't have to travel. And, we still received a lot of gifts, even though we actually requested 'no gifts' on our announcements-everyone was just happy for us, I guess. It was a really nice, simple ceremony, made so by our pastor who gave us a very special blessing during the ceremony. We're dreading DH's nephew's wedding next month, because it's apparently turning into some kind of 'bridezilla' event, so we probably won't even go-we'll just send the gift, as that's all they want from us anyway.

Just do what you want and don't let anyone pressure into anything else:) And, congratulations!!

PS Whatever you decide to do, be sure to have nice photos taken-you'll want them later!

Thank you! Some great tips and again, you're wedding sounds like it was ideal. We always said we wanted to keep it small but are already getting a bit of pressure with regards to who "has to be invited". Urgh...

No bridezilla wedding here! We are determined.

I've been married twice. The first was a big wedding.
The second was an "elopement" with a justice of the peace and my 3 kids (long funny story)
A month later, we had a small family wedding at our house.
It was a LOT less stressful than the first big wedding. A year of planning that big wedding and I hardly remembered any of it.

We wanted to get married in the fall and you are allowed to get married here outside but a lot of the public places were expensive if you booked ahead more than a couple weeks (they figured they could charge more for weddings basically).

There were quite a few places near us that had interesting weddings though like one was in an arboretum. Where we had our wedding was a restored chapel that was a couple hundred years old. I love old chapels (despite not being religious) so it was perfect for me. I'd definitely look around and see what options you have in your local area.

Papaya, I don't like that rule! I would much rather get married outside! My mom and stepdad (at home in Canada) got married on our back deck under big white tents. The deck is HUGE, seriously the size of my flat, and so they had the alter at one end and everyone sat at tables at the other which is also where we ate dinner. It was a lot more casual than sitting in pews - it was like dinner theatre. :D There were about 100 people I guess. Does a tent count as a temporary structure? What if it's always up somewhere like a golf course or something? Could you do that? It provided some great shade since they got married in August in Calgary which is HOT.

Maybe instead of a formal wedding, like others have suggested, you could get married in a quiet ceremony somewhere nice (inside, lol) and then have a big party outside with all your family and friends. It will save on venue hire and everyone can still celebrate your marriage and have a good time without having to sit through the ceremony. I know they're special and everything but my dad's bored me to DEATH (both my parents remarried and I was in the wedding party at both!) as it was very traditional and in a church and blah blah blah. I know it wasn't my wedding so it doesn't really matter what I thought but... boring!! I bet there's a lot of people who would never say it to anyone's face but would much rather hang out and party than sit in a stuffy church :D

I saw someone in a magazine recently who got married in ASDA... :lol:

Congrats on the engagement!

I guess I'm a rebel, but what exactly is the deal with not being able to get married outside unless there is a fixed roof? Is it a fine, jail time, is the marriage null and void? Couldn't you have the ceremony in the garden and step into the kitchen for another quick "Do you? I do. Do you? I do!" and sign the papers under a fixed roof but do everything else the way you want it outside? I don't often suggest people break the law....and I'm not in this post....but could you bend it a little maybe? That is a really stupid law.....makes me want to go throw some tea into the Boston harbor.

I was never into the big weddings either. I've never wanted to walk down an aisle either. So we plan on getting married on the shore of Lake Superior (northern Minnesota) with just immediate family and a few friends. Then on another date we will have a reception for extended family. This way, the wedding will be free (my uncle will officiate) and all we'll need to worry about is the reception cost.

May be we should have a cover charge at ther door! (kidding)

Do you perhaps have any beaches that have a small covered area that you could use?

Congrats on your upcoming wedding!!! :)

We got married in a B&B -- ceremony in the living room, reception through all the public rooms. And they cleaned up the mess! It was quite lovely. Also, it was in early December so I didn't have to do any decorating -- we just enjoyed the Christmas decorations they would have put up whether we had our wedding there or not.

Ha ha! I like your style, I'm a bit of a rebel too. Unfortunately the house is not an option either as it's not a "licenced wedding venue"! Grrr...
Please feel welcome to go and throw your tea, I don't like it anyway :)

Thanks to everyone for replying! Your advice and stories are really helpful. So far I have found a couple of licenced places that have fixed gazebo's in a garden (like stately homes etc) where you can get married. I don't know if they would allow me to just have a civil ceremony there though or if you have to have the whole wedding shebang, which I'm not interested in.

I am thinking something along these lines and the moment:

Ceremony - as short and simple as possible, preferably outside somewhere pretty and not costing an arm and a leg. No wedding dinner, no schmultzy cake cutting, no posed pictures etc... just get married, rinse and go!

Party - Go back to my parents garden, light the coals and have a big ole barbecue with a few friends and family.

No gifts, definitely no speeches, just lots of time to spend with my husband-to-be and to have a dance with family.

I was thinking it would be nice to all walk over to the fields together near our house when it got dark and light some lanterns in to the sky or something...?

I would love to save enough money by having a low-key wedding so that we could have a really amazing honeymoon.

How abut a wedding in the licensed Gazebo with the bride and groom and 2 witnesses and a Minister or Judge to perform the ceremony ? Write your own vows if you wish.