How did you break the news of your marriage to your family and friends? Was anyone seriously pissed off or hurt that you hadn’t had a proper wedding and, more importantly, hadn’t invited them? If so, how did you handle it?
The only couple that I know who eloped broke the news by throwing a big party and, at the end of the night, thanking everyone for coming…this was their wedding reception. To my knowledge, no one was that upset, but this couple had also been together for years and had been married to other people before.
Edit: I ask because I’m watching yet another friend tear her hair out over planning her wedding, and I can’t help but think, “No WAY am I doing this shit – it’s elopement for me or it’s nothing!” But I think my mother would kill me if she didn’t get to come to my (purely hypothetical at this point) wedding.
We went down to the courthouse one Friday afternoon. We told no one we were even thinking about getting married, and afterwards broke the news gradually to friends and family. At the time we had NO money: we were both in college. He made enough to support himself check to paycheck and my parents were paying my half. I wasn’t about to ask them to help pay for a wedding. The $100 we spent on rings and the $40 dinner we went to afterward were serious strains on our budget at the time.
AFAIK no one was horribly upset with us. If they were, they didn’t mention it. But we have a pretty low-frill family.
When I married for the second time, the only people present were me, my husband and my two children. We asked office staff to witness the event. At that stage in my life (and now) I have no need to play dress-up or spend a lot of money because someone else expects me to.
Don’t get me wrong — for my first marriage, I did have a church wedding with attendants, flowers, big cake, big dress. I was 23. If people want to do all this more power to them! Everyone loves a party. I just don’t get why it’s so fraught with stress.
How exactly did you tell your kinfolk, though? Call everyone individually? Wait for a natural moment, like, if you happen to call your parents a few times a month, you just waited until the next phone call?
Wife and I got engaged in April '05. Didn’t tell anybody. We wanted to get married by ourselves, but weren’t sure how to break the news to family. A few weeks later, in an oddly prescient phone conversation, my mom told me that if my wife and I ever wanted to get married on our own, she would understand. Go figure.
Cut to September '05. A few days before we were supposed to leave for Las Vegas to get married at Caesars Palace all by ourselves, I saved a copy of CNN.com’s front page (and a copy of their lead article page) to my hard drive. I rewrote the main article teaser (on the front page) and the main article, and substituted some photos, so the lead article was about us getting married (“Local Couple to Wed”, or something like that). I uploaded this modified page to my website, then sent my family an email that said “holy crap, we’re on CNN!” and gave them the link.
A friend of mine was seriously considering crashing the wedding after he heard the news, but thankfully he wised up before he actually bought a plane ticket.
After it was all done, we made a nice photo album for our mothers (one for each) with pics from the wedding and subsequent honeymoon (Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion), with narrative captions to tell the whole story.
A couple of friends have since told me they wish they had done what we did, i.e. a quiet solo wedding with no guests.
My brother in law almost eloped, but we talked him out of it. Instead he had a very small impromptu wedding in a park on short notice that he only invited about six people to on something like a Thursday night.
There would have been NO way of him breaking it to his mother without making her very sad. Especially since his fiancée made the tactical error of letting people know she wanted to elope because she didn’t want his family or friends at the wedding. Nothing says “I hate the family I’m moving into” more than “I don’t want anyone you know at our wedding” - surprisingly the marriage lasted a lot longer than I thought it would.
So there are other options between 350 guests in a country club with a band and coming home from Vegas with pictures of you and your spouse getting married by Elvis.
My husband and I had a largish reception, but we had six people at our wedding.
I called my mom the next morning. She was happy. I sent out an email to the family mailing list (we have a big family) simply stating that I had married my husband and that we were happy. I didn’t try to explain anything because explanations always seem to invite commentary. The next big family get together, they surprised us with a small wedding cake. One aunt sent a small check, but none of the others did, which is what we expected/wanted.
His family was local (none of mine were), so we told them as we saw them. It turned out his sister did almost the exact same thing a month or two later: I don’t think they had heard we had married when they got married.
I met my two BFFs for breakfast the next morning and told them. They were probably a little disappointed, but they know me pretty well.
We decided to get married one morning, went to get a license a couple hours later, talked for a few minutes about a wedding, and decided to go ahead and get married that evening. Too much family baggage on both sides and lots of traveling would have been involved - would have been a nightmare. I knew I would happily shack up with him forever but a wedding would make me head for the hills.
We told our families and friends over the next couple weeks. I think most were relieved not to have to travel or spend any money. Several said it would not last anyway (20 years & counting - suck it, nay-sayers). The only person who got upset was the wife of one of his friends who apparently felt personally insulted by our decision, but it was no big deal to her husband.
ETA - we both had siblings who were married, some several times, so I don’t think our parents were terribly disappointed. Probably would have felt obliged to have the wedding if one of us had been an only child or first to marry. We were thirty - my mother had long ago given up on me marrying at all so she was just happy it happened at all.
My family lives in one state, and his lives right here in the same area as us. Ideally…and this is ideally…I would have liked a <very> small ceremony with my family, but the logistics even for that weren’t looking like anything do-able anytime soon. He’s been married twice before, WITH big weddings, and didn’t feel at all bad about eloping; it was also the only way I could think of that my family wouldn’t be too pissed. I mean, come on; elopements are romantic, as well as practical 
And it would have been really impromptu, too, as we would have done it in Vegas as an addendum to an already-planned trip. So really, nobody should have been too grumpy, though I did try to see if I could swing flying my mom down for the ceremony
But, as always, family changes everything; when we realized his two boys were really invested in being part of the ‘wedding’, we changed plans and took them along down to the courthouse. The officiant was great, and worked the boys into the ceremony as well, with an added part about this joining making us all a family. It was perfect. 
Afterwards, we invited his parents out for lunch and broke the news; rather, his mom guessed when she saw us all dressed up. It’s not like she was surprised
And, of course, next time we’re visiting my family we’re going to have a slightly larger ceremony 
The way I see it, the whole procedure is two parts: the actual official part, which is boring as hell, and the celebration part. The celebration part is the important thing, and I see no reason why it needs to be attached to the signing of some papers, pfft.
Today’s our two-week anniversary, and so far nobody’s mad
Perfectly put. :p:p:p
We got married and then called everyone individually later and told them all. A few months later we had a celebration party which satisfied people’s need to be a part of the event. And my mom and sisters asked us to re-enact the vows, which we did.
No one was really mad, but a few were unsatisfied. But we didn’t care much, we saved a ton of money and had the wedding we wanted. 15 years and still going.
My grandparents eloped because they didn’t meet the age limit in West Virginia… but did in Ohio. I have no idea what the fallout was, but their marriage lasted 76 years and produced 2 children so I assume that people got over it in time.
My dad married my stepmother (#2) without telling anybody in the family. She was already living with us so it wasn’t as if there was any dramatic change in the household after the fact.
Where we live, you have to get a license from the county for $30, and then return the license signed by the couple, and whoever performs the ceremony, or nobody, if there is no ceremony. The person in the license office said lots of people sign right there and then they’re married. We decided to make it a bit more special, so went someplace nice to sign.
We sent out announcements the next week, and did it in batches so the furthest were sent first, and the locals were sent a couple days later. Then we changed our Facebook status.
Many people didn’t know because though not a secret, it was something we considered private. Our families knew. As far as I know, no feelings were hurt, and several people were thankful that we didn’t do anything big, because they would have felt obligated to come and it would have been a hardship, or would have felt guilty about not being able to come. The only complaint was an international friend who felt slighted because he found out on Facebook instead of from our announcement, which arrived later. He was probably joking more than anything, though.
Can’t speak for myself, as I had a wedding both times. But I have a niece who got married in a State Park, with only both sets of parents, and an attendant apiece present. And they didn’t tell anyone else ahead of time. They told people over the next few days, and then at the end of the summer had a picnic reception. They said later that they couldn’t find a good place to cut the guest list, without leaving out family members on both sides, so they figured it was better to have none than some.
I would like to have been there, but it wasn’t my choice to make.
Of course, then there’s my brother and his wife, who took a vacation to Florida, got married there, and didn’t tell anyone, not even their combined three kids. When they got back they sort of let it slip to my mom and figured it would trickle down.
We decided to get married. We had little to no money, and my family had suffered some disasters that year (death of my oldest sister, mom’s second heart surgery, job losses, that sort of stuff). His family has a lot of poor folks in it.
Well, trying to determine a date - nevermind any other arrangements - turned into a nightmare trying to find dates the majority could make, then some of his started whining about how they couldn’t afford a bus ticket and could we –
That’s it! I said. None of you are invited. We’re eloping!
What? When? Where?
Well, it sort of defeats the purpose of eloping to say when and where, right?
Anyhow - I doubt my family was surprised. I’d been threatening to elope for 15 years. OK, one sister was surprised, but she’s never taken anything I said seriously, so why start then? I have no idea how the in-laws felt, but his own mother had eloped for her second marriage, and so had his sister for her first (and so far only) so it was hardly unheard of on that side.
Since my mother had threatened for years that if I didn’t invite her to my wedding she’d kill me, I did call her up several days before, tell her where and when and offered to buy her a plane ticket to Chicago. She said, no, I had invited her to the wedding but if I was going to elope I should do it properly. She would stay home and continue recovering from her surgery.
Don’t regret it at all.
We eloped over lunch one Friday. The next day, we went to his parents’ house and he opened the conversation with “Guess what we did yesterday?” They were a bit upset, but mostly because he’d just been divorced for 6 months, and he and I only dated for 4 weeks. It’s been 27+ years - they’ve gotten over it.
Three weeks later, we went to see my folks, who lived 800 miles away. I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, but they didn’t disown me, and they eventually came to see he’s a winner.
We did do a reaffirmation of vows for our 6th anniversary with family and some friends and a small party at my in-laws’ house. But frankly, I think my family was more upset that we pretty much ignored our 25th anniversary and didn’t have big party. That’s just not our style.
We threw a massive engagement party for our friends a few months after we got engaged. Wedding plans went through a few iterations (parents involved), then we got a bit distracted—starting our business, buying a house, etc.
About a year after we got engaged a friend we hadn’t seen since then was visiting our new home. “So, you guys threw this kick-ass party, then what? When’s the wedding?” I looked at him, at soon-to-be-Mrs Devil, and said “tell you what. You fly with us to Vegas this weekend and we’ll get married.”
Massive snowstorm that week closed down the east coast. We finally made it out after three days of cancellations (which resulted in us hyper-cynics getting married on Valentine’s day :)), which gave plenty of time to make lots of phone calls to let them know what was happening. Very slow-motion elopement with lots of congratulations and soft landings.
Exactly what we did, for the same reason. The party was awesome and people flew in from all over, no hubbub with who sits with who etc…just fun.
We skipped off to Vegas, then told everybody the next week. Nobody was upset. In fact, I think they were relieved they didn’t have to buy presents or attend a wedding.