Anyone here ever eloped? How’d you do it? How did your family/friends react?
Not I, but some friends of mine eloped in Vegas. Well, semi-eloped. They decided to drop plans for a big wedding and married much earlier than expected to avoid the hassle, but they arranged for family members to be able to tune in to a live-feed over the internet, a service provided by the chapel they picked. I guess that cut down on some negative family reactions, since they didn’t feel so left out.
DrLoveGun and I tried to. The witness DLG picked blabbed to a bunch of people, who then got all hurt that they weren’t chosen blah blah blah, and so we finally said, “Screw it” and just let everyone come, including families. We ended up with about 25 people total, due largely to the less than 24 hours notce the people who found out had. Thankfully.
Anyway, it turned out pretty well. We got married in NYC by a pretty new-agey minister of some type, and spent $150 on the ceremony, transportation, and other fees. Then we took everyone who came out to dinner, and that bill was considerably more.
All in all, I highly recommend it. But threaten any proposed witnesses with the pain should they tell a soul.
Couples wishing to marry in NSW have to file a Notice of Intended Marriage with the Registry of Births, Death and Marriages at least one month before the date of the wedding ceremony. So I don’t think it’s possible to elope here.
We did: we just went to the courthouse one afternoon and got married, and sort of told people gradually over the next month or so–we were already living together. We kept it secret both because we had NO money–we were living a hand-to-mouth student lifestyle, and even a really cheap wedding costs a couple of hundred bucks, and a couple of hundred bucks would have had to come out of the grocery budget–and, even more so, it was a private thing between the two of us. Some people whined a little, but not too bad–helped probably by the fact that this was very much in charecter for the two of us, so no one was surprised.
I didn’t but my sister did. She just went missing for a couple of days and when she returned she just said, “Guess what? I got married”.
How did the family react? Your daughter/kid sister goes AWOL and comes back later as someone’s wife…how would you react? What made it worse was that the hubby is a deadbeat (which was why she chose to elope, I suppose). 10 years, two kids and a lot of physical abuse later, she finally divorced Mr. Deadbeat.
Better late than never, I suppose.
The Highwayman and I eloped. We’d been batting the idea around for a few years, and he just said one morning “hell, let’s get married”. We did the deed when we visited my family in Colorado. Here’s where I get eloper’s guilt - I was visiting my family, and none of them were present for it. The whole reason we did it in CO though is that the marriage license cost 10 bucks, the registrar in the county we did it in was conveniently located at the mall, and you don’t need any one to officiate. Zip zero zilch. I put on my best dress and he put on his best (only) suit and it was done. Easier (and cheaper) than Vegas.
Of course, we were chickenshit and didn’t tell anyone for like 4 months. The only people that were openly pissed off about it were people whose opinions didn’t matter to us. The fam seemed pretty happy about it for the most part. We’re planning to have a big party and ceremony thingie when we’re done with school.
The wife and I did. With relatives on both coasts, it just wasn’t worth the hassle to plan out a wedding. So, we went to Las Vegas, hit the drive-thru chapel, and viola! 
My sister also eloped, her wedding photo was done in an old tyme photo shops. She was dressed as a brothel girl and her husbsand was dressed like a cowboy kicked back in a bath tub with a bottle of whisky in his hand. It was priceless. I wish I had done it.
My husband and I did. Called up a couple of friends to witness, and ran off to the courthouse.
Family and friends were surprised but supportive. Some didn’t even find out until recently (but were nice enough to send along “paper anniversary” gifts as a show of support). My mother just wrote me an email today, after attending my cousin’s wedding back home, and says “Weddings always makes me realise I missed yours.” Yeah, you missed it, mum, it was just signing some papers in an office while wearing nice clothes, scheduled in after my husband got home from work, a nice dinner at a steakhouse with our friends, quick sex back home, then we drove around all night long, getting ourselves some Slurpees and then to the top of the Space Needle around midnight. Not exactly the “traditional” wedding day my mother keeps pining over, thinking she missed it.
We have been made to promise that we will have a big “for show” wedding sometime in the future. We will.
Wait a minute. First you claim you got married. Now you say you were just fiddling around.
Well, I didn’t want to string her along.
Out of chartacter for your bass nature, I suppose?
Two eloping stories: one incredible sad/stupid, the other quite beautiful:
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My parents - Mother taught school in rural Ohio in 1939. In that time and place a married woman could not teach - we didn’t want our precious children to be taught by any female who was not a virgin. Pathetic, ain’t it. Anyway, she could not wear her ring, and only the principle kew of their quick trip to Kentucky.
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I once attend a fly-in of antique aircraft - one of the had cardboard dummies wearing circa-1929 clothes. It turns out that those were the clothes the owner’s parents had worn when the eloped in the plane in 1929. Pretty cool, huh?
I guess I sorta eloped. Got married at the Shinjuku Kuyakusho in Tokyo Japan. Did call the family before hand, but it was kinda like “Hey Mom, guess what, I’m getting married tomorrow. Wish us luck and would you like to speak to the bride for the first time?”
We got a license from the courthouse in Covington, Kentucky, then married at a Justice of the Peace (no idea what else this guy does) nearby. He pulled a couple of regulars from the bar mid-afternoon. This was on a Friday, we went rafting in West Virginia with a bunch of our friends that weekend and told them after the day of rafting*. Then called and told our parents.
Since my parents eloped in 1960 (we did in 1990), it was sort of a tribute to them. Since Mrs. Shibb’s mother has never been particularly welcoming to me, this seemed the easiest way to go.
*We actually tried to find a Justice to marry us during the rafting trip, but WVU had their home opener that weekend so we couldn’t get one.
Yup, got married in front of a justice of the peace with no one else present. A couple of months later we had a reception at a restaurant with three or four dozen people. That whole wedding ceremonial thing was just not for us, and God knows, we’ve been to plenty of expensive weddings with all the trimmings where the marriage didn’t last more than a couple of years. Makes you wonder what the point is.
In restrospect, we feel it was one of the smartest things we ever did, and every time we see people going through wedding-planning agony, we get to feel smug.
Mr. SCL and I eloped, kind of. He was stationed at TAMC on Oahu, and I had gone out for a visit. He proposed, I accepted and we decidied I would go back to Georgia and we would get married when he got leave. He decided a couple of days later that we should get married before I went home so I couldn’t change my mind. So we did.
Seems to be a tradition in his family - his sister eloped too.
The fact that we had known each other for 11 years saved our friends from killing us. 15 years later we’re still together.
My cavelady and I semi-eloped. We ran off to New Braunfels for a weekend, booked a gazebo in the park for a couple of hours, “abducted” my grandfather (an ordained minister), and did it all right there, photos courtesy a borrowed remote-shuttered digital camera and tripod. We returned my grandfather, then spent the night at a lovely but bad-for-my-allergies B&B (it did put a damper on the wedding night, sad to say). A week or two later, we sent announcements to everyone, most of whom already knew we were engaged. All-in-all, romantic and economical. The best of both worlds.
Of course that witness is getting married next year. Anyone want to crash that wedding?