Growing up, my family has always been spread out. I grew up on the East Coast of the United States, but many of my relatives lived on the West Coast or in Europe. My high school friends and friends I made at work have also become scattered around the country. My friends and I were like a dandelion, we all started together, then we got dispersed by the wind.
When I first started dating my husband, he was in a similar situation, except the wind had brought him to me from Belgium.
When we got engaged, we faced the conundrum of choosing a location, not a venue, but a geographical region to tie the knot. There seemed to be no good answer, so we decided to forgo a wedding party altogether.
We wanted to be considerate of our friends and family
We live in Washington, DC, but most of my husband’s family and friends live in Europe. My brother and his family live in the Middle East. My closest friends are spread out across New England, Florida, and the West Coast. There was no good option that wouldn’t require at least half of our expected invitees to travel across the country, or across the Atlantic, or both.
Any scenario we came up with would burden our friends and family with significant expenses for airfare, accommodations, and time, only to spend less than an hour with us to celebrate our wedding.
I’ve also traveled for weddings before. I was happy to celebrate the people getting married, but the reality is that the time I actually spent with the couple was minimal. The couple always has a full agenda of things to do on top of spreading their time across all the guests attending. I knew I didn’t want my guests to travel if I wasn’t going to get to spend genuine time with them.
More on couples who eloped
We decided eloping made sense for us
In addition to not wanting to burden our guests with travel for a wedding, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money to throw a party. We had just purchased a house and were planning to start a family. We wanted to put our money towards those areas of our life.
Neither of our families come from a background where having an elaborate wedding holds major significance in the culture. We were fortunate that our family supported our choice to elope.
Our wedding day was simple but meaningful to us
The day we got married was simple and beautiful and represented our relationship. DC allows you to officiate your own wedding, which we did. My husband and I were the only two people at our ceremony, which made it completely intimate. The only thing we had scheduled to do that day was our dinner reservation.
Courtesy of Renate Flanagan.
In the morning, we went hiking near the weekend house we had purchased in the mountains. In the afternoon, we exchanged the vows we had each written at the park where we had our first date, and then had celebratory drinks. We ended the evening at a fine-dining restaurant.
I have one small regret
The only thing I have some regret about from our elopement was not hiring a photographer. The only pictures we have from that day are selfies we took and a picture the hostess took for us at the restaurant where we had dinner.
On the flip side, not having a scheduled photographer allowed us to have the flexibility to change the date. Our original plan was to get married on a Friday, but we changed it to the following Monday because of rain. We only had to reschedule our dinner reservation and our days off from work.
I’ve heard some people say getting married was the best day of their lives. To me, the day I got married was just the start to the beautiful life we continue to build together.
