After doing a couple of weeks worth of wedding research, we are seriously considering eloping, just the two of us with our DD, due to the ridiculous cost involved with getting married! The destinations that have made the shortlist are: Broome, Bali, Cairns or the Gold Coast. We would prefer to marry in Australia as we want the Australian marriage certifcate. Has anyone eloped, any tips?
Haven't done it but would love to. The only thing that stops us is that we know our parents would be really disappointed if they missed out on seeing us wed.
My ex and I almost did it. We wanted to marry in Hawaii but when family got wind of it they wanted to come along too. It all got too complicated so we didn't do it. We ended up with a tiny wedding in the Dandenongs & a honeymoon in Hawaii instead. That kept the family happy.
If you do decide to do it make sure you don't tell anyone of your plan or someone could just talk you out of it. Just say you are going on holiday and announce the marriage on your return.
We seriously considered it, but thought of going o/s to do so.
We decided against it as the more we looked into it, we knew as Satya said
(1) family would get upset
(2) if we did tell them we knew that some of them would want to come too!
We ended up having a smallish informal outdoor wedding insted.
Yep, the Bear & I eloped in December 2006. We hadn't been together very long (6-7 months), so no-one was really expecting it. We told absolutely no-one. We were going on a round the world trip anyway, and our first stop was San Francisco. We took a side trip to Vegas and got married in a brand new bright red Ford Mustang convertible which we hired for the few days we were there (the Bear wanted to bring the car home!). Everyone was great about it after the fact (what choice do they really have anyway?) my mum was briefly disappointed but she has never been particularly involved in my life so she didn't harp on it much. My stepmum (who I'm very close to) was disappointed cause she would have loved to be involved in my wedding. My dad was completely ecstatic because as far as he was concerned it saved him shelling out $50K for a wedding (which I would never have asked him to do BTW). My brother was the most shocked, we had seen him in Australia at Christmas, met him a week later in Spain and had got married in the meantime. The Bear had been married before so his family didn't make a fuss about it.
As to cost, apart from the flight (from memory around $2500 ish which was pretty standard then for a RTW ticket I think) and the car hire the costs were:
Licence USD$55
Wedding chapel USD $45
Tip for minister USD $60 (discretionary)
Cheapest wedding in history! Because we spent so little on the wedding itself, we could afford to stay in nice places in the States, Spain, Switzerland, England and Thailand over the course of the trip. We arrived in Vegas at 5 in the afternoon on the day we got married and didn't start 'organising' the wedding until we got to the hotel room, we were married by 7.30pm.
For us it was great - it was completely intimate, there was no big hoopla, no sense of pressure, no one else's expectations to manage. We were parked outside the Wedding License Bureau and we looked at each other and said "are we going to do this?". We could have just driven away and laughed about it, no one would have known anything about it, so there was absolutely no sense of pressure. We both agreed we would go ahead and do it, and we have never regretted it for a second!
I have a few friends who have eloped in Australia and have found that to be great too.
Good luck with whatever you decide!
I want to elope but DP won't hear of it! He has a big family and they all would be cranky with us whereas my large family are all weddinged out! I have had two friends elope, one to Port Douglas and another to Cairns and they both loved it!
BellyBelly Member
Anyone eloped?
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