If you’ve ever wondered why someone would elope, how to elope, or why I love planning elopements…this is for YOU!

To start this off I want to tell you a little about how I got married…

We did the stereotypical courthouse elopement on a Friday riiiiiiight before the courthouse closed for the day. I pulled a random white dress out of my closet, threw my hair up in the most basic “updo” I could manage, and we did the thing! Was it everything I ever hoped for? Nope, but I don’t regret it because it opened my eyes to the fact that not everything is exactly the way society says it has to be!

ELOPING included!

You can plan you elopement (and I think you should), you can have your dream dress, your florals can be out of this world, and you can pick to do it wherever your heart desires!

Before we got married we thought there were only two ways to get married, in a venue with ALL THE THINGS, or at the courthouse with basically nothing.

If we knew then what we know now we absolutely would have gotten married on a mountain top somewhere! In fact once we learned about planned elopements we celebrated five years of marriage on a mountain top with a cliff side view to renew our vows…and it WAS everything I had ever dreamt of whether I knew it or not when we got married.

So why elope?

There are so many reasons that couples decide eloping is the right fit for them! Whether you just adore nature, just don’t feel like a big wedding is your thing, or you want to work with your budget while still having a dream day…here are a view reasons why eloping might be right for you!

• BUDGET: Starting here because this is one of the most common factors in planning any wedding, if not the most common. Whether you have a strict budget or a huge budget elopements are so much more customizable that you can have an amazing day on ANY budget. We planned our vow renewal elopement for under $1,000 attire and all. I also talked in the past about the average cost of a wedding venue in the US being $18K dollars. Yep you read that right just a venue for EIGHTEEN thousand dollars! You can elope in Hawaii, with epic views, lodge in a cabin tucked away in the lush landscape with private beach access, celebrate with a Helicopter ride as newlyweds and have every moment beautifully documented for $8,000. TEN thousand dollars less than the average cost of only a venue….and with that I think I rest my case on budget.
• A huge wedding sounds stressful or not like you… then do whatever the heck you want friend! You can elope, and still have your parents and loved ones there to see you say your vows. You can literally make an elopement day anything you want. Just the two of you, or surrounded by the ones you love most. You can pick a forest, or a beach, a mountain top, or a volcano! Literally anything you can dream up! You don’t have to sign up for something that was never who you are to begin with.
• SOMETHING DIFFERENT everyone wants their wedding day to be unique and what better way to do that than to plan an epic day doing whatever you want! I’ve seen people rock climb on their wedding day, bungee jump, or less extreme things like sharing a meal in a meadow at the base of a snow capped mountain, hiking to a waterfall, hiring a private chef to cook their first married dinner, the options are quite literally endless!

I could give you endless reasons to elope but I’ll leave it there with some of the most popular reasons I’ve heard while being in this industry. I adore helping my clients plan their dream elopement day, and my biggest advice for planning an elopement would be to find someone who knows how to plan them to help you if you don’t where to start. I do this for all of my couples and love coming up with creative ideas for them!

Here are 3 tips on starting to plan an elopement to help though!

1. Pick a photographer you LOVE! I know this may not seem like the first thing to do but 9 times out of 10 photographers who specialize in elopements will be able to point you in the right direction of vendors, locations, and even ideas you may have not thought of!
2. Make a list of the top 3 things you love doing together this will help you so much in figuring out what a good location would be to incorporate things you love that are unique to your relationship. For instance if you love to kayak together picking a location with water access would make it so you can do that on your wedding day!
3. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Seriously! Think of the most exciting thing you could imagine and do it! There’s no rules on eloping. The most important thing is the two of you getting to be yourself on your day and saying I do.

I hope this helped you guys and if you have any questions let me know! I would love to be able to help make wedding planning exciting for you!