Eloping.. Advice needed!!!

Hippymichelle

Hi all,We are considering eloping in the next year on our own! I don't know where to start - we are not pushed where we go or time of the year etc we have a budget of 3-4,000. We would appreciate any advice or hearing peoples personal experience
Thanks in advance

clint_silver

Hippymichelle wrote: »

Hi all,We are considering eloping in the next year on our own! I don't know where to start - we are not pushed where we go or time of the year etc we have a budget of 3-4,000. We would appreciate any advice or hearing peoples personal experience
Thanks in advance

Id be going to goa or thailand. Actually getting married in those countries in any denomination and having the marriage recognised here is a different matter but will be the same whether youve eloped or done it with 100 people present.

Youve obviously given thought to how family and friends will react. Although a lot of people will say its your wedding do it whatever way you want, if you have close family, some thought should be given to it but thats maybe a separate discussion as to where youre going to go.

Sweetaure

I'd be interested to know how you reached this decision; my partner and I have decided to get married next year, and as I am French, we decided to have a ceremony with our families only in France next year. After hearing a few comments about the cost of travel, and going so far away, etc..., we have decided to put it to our families that if this is too much for them, then we can elope. Now I think they will be happy to come to our wedding, as we will be paying for the accommodation and the food for 3 days, all they’d have to pay really is ferry/ air fares. But now that we’ve heard those comments, I’m thinking that it might just be easier to elope.

Now to answer your question, it really depends on your taste. India/ Thailand sounds good, you could also do a fly-drive trip to the US, hey you could even get married in Vegas! J Or how about a tropical island like the Seychelles/ Mauritius/ the Caribbean? There are plenty of all inclusive offers that wouldn’t break the bank. And you might even get a few envelopes when people hear you’re getting married!

Good luck!

Sleepy

Sweetaure, am I reading your post correctly? Are you actually saying that because some of your family have voiced concern about the expense involved in a foreign wedding whilst the world is in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression you're thinking about throwing your toys out of the pram and excluding them from your day? :eek:

Sweetaure

Sorry now Sleepy, but isn't this a little aggressive/ judgmental? This is a very personal decision, isn’t it? The comments were actually made by my partner’s family, who will have to travel from Ireland. I completely understand that it is an expense for a lot of people that they wouldn’t have had to consider if we got married here. However, this decision was taken carefully: my family will also have to travel a great distance, we have chosen the month of June to give everyone the option to stay for an extra few days for a summer holiday, which all the Irish side would normally do, and also, as I said in my post, we are paying for the bulk of the wedding, and only after hearing those comments did we decide to give them the option not to attend. We would still have two ceremonies, one in France and one in Ireland, both of which we will also pay for.
As I said, I am pretty confident they will be happy to attend.

Sleepy

I'm witnessing the same in my partner's family at the moment Sweetaure and, to me, emotionally blackmailing people to spend money isn't a good start to a life-long relationship. What seems like a perfectly reasonable expense to your may be a fortune to someone else and even people that seem to be well off can be experiencing serious cashflow problems at the moment.

Fair enough if you don't mind if some of your friends are able to attend or not but honestly, if I were getting married abroad (and I'd love to tbh), I wouldn't be happy doing it unless I were paying for the flights and accommodation of all mine and my fiancée's families i.e. the only think I'd be asking them for would be the few days of their annual leave (which is still a big ask to many people!).

Obviously, when yourself and your partner are from different countries, there's always going to have to be one side of the family travelling. The thing for me would be to make it as easy as possible for the side that have to travel: to cover as much of their expense as you can and, if there's still grumles at that point, apologise and ask what else they think you can do, not threaten to elope and leave them missing their son/daughter's wedding.

Sweetaure

Hi Sleepy,

I’m not sure you read my post properly, or if you did, you may be taking your feeling from your experience and applied them to what I said. I didn’t say we are threatening to elope, I said we are giving our families the option not to attend, in which case we would do it alone. We are only having our immediate families and didn’t I mention we are paying for the whole thing?
I think also we are not seeing eye to eye, and while I respect that you have a different view on things, I don’t appreciate the judgmental tone of your posts. If you want to get married, you should do it the way you want. Now before you jump down my throat, let me say that of course you should take into consideration other people’s lives (commitments with jobs, kids…), financial situation, etc… In my particular circumstances, I know for a fact that this isn’t a huge expense. My partner’s family is by no means very well-off, but they go on a couple of holidays a year and my family can also afford to drive down to the South for their daughter’s wedding.
What you decide to do for your own wedding is fair enough, but please don’t judge others’ when you don’t know what their circumstances are and what I said in my original post meant in no way that we were threatening anything.

Also, do you really think that asking your family to the day when you celebrate your love for and commitment to your fiancée is too much? We have very different family structures I’d say, because your family should be happy to take a couple of days off to see you and your partner on one of the most important days of your life. And by the way, do you think it would be fair to pay for one family to travel, and have the other one pay for their own?

Anyway, you have your opinion and I have mine. If you wish to discuss this further, please create a new thread. Apologies Hippymichelle, I hope you get the advice/ suggestions you are looking for.

Gatica

I'm with Sweetaure on this, I don't think there were any kind of immature threats or blackmailing going on there. If none of your family can afford to attend your wedding, what's the point of throwing it? Then it makes sense to consider eloping. That's not a threat.

In terms of foreign elopements, I think a sunny ceremony on an exotic island is very romantic. Mauritius, or Maldives?

Sassie

Sent you a PM Hippiemichelle

happyhippo1972

Don't you think you are overreacting Sweetaure? Sleepy is just saying that offering the option to not attend might be perceived as you not caring if they attend or not. Weddings are stressful and families don't make it easier. I can only recommend you to try to stay calm and accept that people have different opinions. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they are judging you.
Good luck and hope things work out for you

Sweetaure

Hi Happyhippo,

I appreciate that my response may have come across as defensive, which it was to a certain extent, but this is because Sleepy’s posts were judegmental… I quote: “you're thinking about throwing your toys out of the pram and excluding them from your day? :eek: “, “emotionally blackmailing people to spend money isn't a good start to a life-long relationship”, and “Fair enough if you don't mind if some of your friends are able to attend or not”. If this isn’t judging, then I don’t know what is.

I am more than happy to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t agree with me, like I am with you now, but I am not about to welcome passive aggressive comments. For example, saying that someone wouldn’t be happy getting married abroad unless they were paying for everyone to travel implies that not paying is wrong or not fair – in the context of the preceding conversation.
To be honest, I can emphasize that someone else might have a really hard time trying to juggle families/ friends without even starting to consider a wedding abroad. It has been hard on us, and we’re only inviting us our closest family members to stay with us for a few days. We will also have an evening out for our local friends/ extended family in each country, which should help smooth out feelings. And the whole thing is not easy to manage. But please, let’s let everyone have their own view on the way they want to have their wedding. Who am I to say that Sleepy is wrong for apologizing to his/ her family for asking them to use their holidays for a wedding? Although I think it’s extreme, I don’t think it’s wrong.

Thanks, I know things will work out for me – if I stop getting worked up over other people’s comments!

Sleepy

Sweetaure, to be fair I was judging: I think telling your parents that if they have a problem with the expense of travelling to your wedding you'll do it without them is incredibly selfish and immature.

And yes, I consider it rude to expect guests to plan their holidays or go to enormous expense to attend one's wedding. And I'm not asking any of my friends or family to use their holidays to attend my wedding: we're paying the extra to have it on a Saturday to reduce the hassle for our guests. Not that we're spending a fortune, mind you, we've simply had to cut back on some of the "nice-to-haves" (e.g. professional photographer, videographer etc.) to allow us to do this.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinions, just as I'm perfectly entitled to consider your expectations of your guests to be bridezilla behaviour.

Sweetaure

Sleepy – who asked for your opinion on my behavior or decisions regarding my wedding? I didn’t! I originally asked why someone else was eloping, to compare with my own experience, and gave a suggestion regarding their destination, which they asked for. I had to justify my reasons for doing this and that because you judged me, and really, this is for me, my partner and our families to discuss and decide.
You keep going back to the supposed threats I made to my family, but please, post the quote, because nowhere did I say anything like that.
What you are doing for your own wedding is for you to decide, and I didn’t judge anything you said you were doing or would do. Please extend the same courtesy to me.

Sleepy

Sweetaure, welcome to the internet: when you post opinions on web forums and get opinions on your posting from other forum users.

This is your reference to your (admittedly veiled) threat:

After hearing a few comments about the cost of travel, and going so far away, etc..., we have decided to put it to our families that if this is too much for them, then we can elope.

When you ask for opinions, you'll get them. If you only want opinions that back up your own, you're on the wrong website.

I'm going to ignore this thread from here on, enjoy the last word, something tells me you're the sort who gets a kick out of that kind of thing.

Sweetaure

Very mature...

Hippymichelle - can you share your reasons why you are chosing to elope?

Gatica

seriously, I get the feeling he/she's trolling...!