My clients often feel isolated as they plan their weddings. They can’t talk about the hard parts because people think they’re complaining, ungrateful, or second-guessing their choice to get married. But I know something my clients don’t: They’re not alone. Hear it from people who’ve been there.
Eileen B.
Eloped March 24, 2018
When it comes to your wedding, what was your...
Worst surprise?
Because we did so little planning and had so few people involved in our little elopement, there really weren’t any big surprises on the day of! The only unpleasant surprise came the day after, when we sat down to look at pictures.
We didn’t have a professional photographer; we just had our friends take pictures. This felt like a great choice at the time because we aren't people who are super comfortable posing for pictures and we didn't want to interrupt the day to spend a lot of time taking photos.
But when we did review photos the next day we realized that there are only a couple pictures of the two of us where we're both looking into the same camera and neither of us is blinking.
While I’m glad we were able to spend the day living in the moment, in hindsight I wish we’d taken a minute to make sure we had a few pictures that were a little less candid and more composed!
Biggest regret?
I honestly thought the wedding itself was perfect and really wouldn’t change anything about it. What I do regret is not doing a little more planning leading up to it.
In our pursuit of making the process and day as relaxed and fun as possible, we neglected to plan for some of the logistical aspects surrounding the wedding, which led to some unnecessary stress later on.
For example, I spent a lot of time in the following days trying to quickly design and order wedding announcements so that we could tell friends and family our news in a more traditional way before announcing it on social media. Those still haven’t arrived and now I’m sitting on weeks-old news!
It would have been great to have done some of that work and planning beforehand so we could just focus on celebrating afterward.
Best advice?
If you’re planning an elopement or destination wedding — or breaking tradition in some other significant way — it’s still important to plan thoroughly.
Our photo and announcement debacles are examples of how we could’ve been better prepared without sacrificing spontaneity or our ability to be present in the moment on our actual wedding day.
Beyond logistics, I think it’s very important to be thoughtful about how you’ll approach discussing the topic with friends and family. I did a lot of research around elopement etiquette and expectations because I knew it could be touchy.
My husband and I knew no one in our families would disown us for our decision to elope, and we didn’t run into any conflict when we called our families to announce our news, but in some communities or families the topic might be more delicate and interested parties might have stronger reactions.
Being thoughtful, considerate, and prepared when discussing your plans and announcing your decision could be vital to maintaining relationships with people who might be disappointed they weren’t involved in the way they’d have liked to be.