Anyone here Elope and regret it?

Call me the girl but I want a wedding with family and she wants to "go to the court house". Am I crazy. I know that I am crazy to get married in the first place, but what the hell.

I know I'd be $20k richer, if we just flew to Vegas and got hitched. I don't regret having a traditional wedding, just the bill. Many folks with complex family structures do the elope thing, just to avoid the family conflict at the event. We seriously considered it.

We actually did both. Got married almost a year before the big date.

Kendall

In reply to snipes:

What's preventing you from doing both?

Go to the courthouse and committ to the woman you love. Later, have a second ceremony with those whom you want to share the experience.

You could bring a few family members and friends to the courthouse.

We did our whole wedding in 6 days, including rings (1 day in "Little Jerusalem, Houston,) rent the place, fly the parents out (or tell parents to fly out), order the beer, cake, get the Europa started, etc. It doesn't have to be $20K to still not be blue jeans at the courthouse.

My fiance knows that the only way we are having a big wedding is if someone else foots the bill. Thankfully(for her) her family feels like being traditional and paying for most of it. We have just over a year to go.

After several months of increasing headaches trying to work out how to get the two families on two different continents together in Florida (as F-i-L doesn't travel much for health reasons) we decided to do something about the headache and legged it to Vegas instead.

....taking notes...

I married my ex at a courthouse. Her parents & grandparents showed up. It was simple & cheap....unfortunately, she was not.

When my wife & I got married 4-years ago, we agreed on a simple & cheap church wedding. We put it all together, including reception, for about $700 - that, of course, was with the help of friends & family.

sachilles wrote: I know I'd be $20k richer, if we just flew to Vegas and got hitched. I don't regret having a traditional wedding, just the bill. Many folks with complex family structures do the elope thing, just to avoid the family conflict at the event. We seriously considered it.

My wife and I didn't elope, but we also didn't spend more than a grand or so on the wedding, either. Rented the schooner Nighthawk in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and were maried by the captain of the ship with about 25 of our frinds and family with us, partying on the boat. Much fun was had by all.

If the girl is worried about money:
If you pay attention to the details, getting married can be done for less than $10k, easily. I got married for about $7k and that's with 250 people. We were planning on 150, so it would've been less than $5k.

We were often tempted to elope, but were glad we stuck with it. A life change of this magnitude deserves a ceremony.

Wifey and I got hitched at the Hillsborough County Courthouse. That's Tampa. 15 friends and family were there, and it seemed like half the courthouse staff joined in. It was great, a lot of fun was had by all. The whole group went to a seafood house afterwards, and more fun was had. Not one bit of regret about doing it that way. And oh yes, Mrs. CWH had checked the costs of doing the traditional thing. I guess it was sufficient, 19 years and counting.

Do it, then throw a covered dish cookout for the fam/friends in the spring to celebrate.

The costs are really stifling to us.... For the "ideal" wedding, we were looking at like $30-$40k total. That's like... two years take-home salary for me.

Funny this thread should pop up. Not 30 minutes before this thread was created, my girlfriend mentioned eloping instead.

We tied the knot at the picturesque Volusia County Courthouse in beautiful down town Daytona Beach 31 days after we met (would have been 30 but the day before was Veterans day). We did it on our lunch breaks, and as I recall we got boned out of lunch because it took so damn long. The following summer we had a big ol' bbq for friends and family at our place.

Wouldn't change a thing. I understand that some people need the ceremony and I'm cool with that, but it's not for us. Honestly, I think we were married within a few hours of meeting for the first time. Having the paperwork was merely a formality at that point.

jg

My friend, who was best man at our wedding, didn't have the proverbial pot to pee in. His spouse-to-be (or future ex-spouse-to-be) thought she was Ms. Debutante of Atlanta. They had a huge wedding in that rich part of Atlanta with the mayor there, horse drawn carriage, the whole thing. I was at sea at the time or I would have been there. Her family paid for the $10K (1985 dollars, ~30-40K today) wedding . They could have use a new truck instead so he could get to work as a carpenter.

we did to fro about $6-7k... 150-200 peeps... did a small snackage type buffet for the reception... rented a house on the beach (made for parties), mom made the cake (which was made to feed 300+ peeps... but she was a pro cake decorater... mema made wifes dress, friend did our pics in trade for blueberries from memas house.

still not sure it was worth that much money... but it was good seeing some of the people there that we hadn't seen for years.

Yeah, a cool wedding doesn't have to cost a zillion dollars. My wife found a neat restaurant an hour south of us. I don't even know what to call the style, but it was an old house that gave the guests several places to hang out--various rooms inside plus various patios, courtyards, etc.

The owner helped us put together a nice menu. The alcohol added to the final tally, but as my grandma said, you can't have a cash bar at a wedding. Here's their site: http://www.madisonscourtyard.com

Let's just say that I'm not a big fan of wedding DJs and bands (sorry if anyone does that), so I loaded up my iPod with a bunch of jazz. That gave us some nice wedding music for free. The ceremony was done by Judge Phillips. Our Challenge competitors have met him.

Total bill for the party (maybe 100 people) was less than $3000. People said it was a fun party, so I guess it was worth it. It was also worth it to have our families there.

"Big" Wedding Tip:

Ask about vegetarian meals.

I had three vegetarian friends on the guest list, so I asked if they could do special meals for them. It turns out, the vegetarian option was about a third the cost of the meals for normal people, so we included it as a third option, along with the two meaty choices.

WAY more people than we expected selected the vegetarian meal. It seems that fat women who want to pretend that they are trying to loose weight like to eat that stuff in front of other women, along with some others who were actually trying to stay fit. It saved us nearly a thousand dollars.

Long line at the cake table though...

What bothers me most about the big expensive weddings is the fact that most of these young couples could really use this money to get started in life. Instead, it's all gone on one fancy afternoon. I think that is stupid. My harsh opinion is that the big fancy wedding only serves egos, whether it is the bride's or her family's. That is not a good foundation for a life committment. Two years ago, we went to a Really Big Wedding. Fancy hotel, (paid for by the parents), beautiful cermony with many attendants and flowers, glorious dinner, open bar. Total cost- over 100 large. Now, the parents are effectively bankrupt and the couple are separated.

Move to TX. My wife and I said we were married and 6 months later we were. We been together 7.5 years.

Nothing's more affordable than staying single.

Very few things are as expensive as getting single again.

Ahh, the big Saturday...
That is what I call it. These young girls put endless hours of planning for the perfect "big Saturday." They seem to have no plans on what they will do come the first Monday back to work.
The wedding is one day, the marriage is every day.

Got married last fall for under $3k dress to drinks. Small dealio with 40 folks or so. Spent more on a week in the Zion/Bryce/Grand Canyon area with a rental Jeep. Would do it all over again exactly the same any time.

Tips: -Small local church; small means it looks fuller in pictures and the congregation has less $ and might be open to more.
-Cupcakes>wedding cake, every day. -Reception should be fun time with family and friends, so pick somewhere you like to be, not some crazy venue. We went with my FILs favorite local restaurant, had more food than anyone could eat and half the place to ourselves for $8 a head, including deserts.