Your Wedding, Your Way: The Modern Couple's Guide to Destination Elopements, Courthouse Ceremonies, Intimate Dinner Parties, and Other Nontraditional Nuptials

Introduction

The bride and groom sit side by side at a long wooden table. Pine branches run down its center, anchoring a scatter of twinkling mercury glass votives and two floral centerpieces bursting with crimson and peach roses. Servers hover, pouring Champagne.

Soon, the three-course menu inspired by Adirondack ambience will be served to the dinner party of eleven close family members and friends: a first course option of panseared sea scallops or seasonal salad; the second of pan-seared halibut, venison, or steak tenderloin; and the third, a small, two-tiered, maple rosemary cake with fresh blackberries. At the far end of the table, a stone fireplace for roasting marshmallows stretches from the floor to the ceiling like a proud, quiet host. Outside, January snow rests on Lake Placid.

The newlyweds, Amber and Bryan, had exchanged vows earlier that day in a sun-drenched room overlooking the lake where Amber, wearing a white silk dress with a hand-embroidered train, a delicate diamond crown, and no veil, walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. Lake Placid was a frequent weekend getaway for Amber and Bryan while dating, a place brimming with memories and sentiment, perfect for their elopement.

They’d been dating for seven years when Bryan proposed in a hammock in Maui at sunset, and neither wanted a long, drawn-out engagement followed by a big wedding bash. But more than that, they wanted to make their wedding day personal to them. Conventional weddings can be so overwhelmingly complicated that all of the savory little details get easily lost in the shuffle, says Bryan. "What we created was a day where we could truly take our time, drink in the moment, and share the best day of our lives with the people closest to us.

People ask us all the time, ‘You think you’ll ever look back and wish you had a big wedding?’ The answer is still an emphatic and resounding, ‘No way.’

Amber and Bryan are certainly not alone at the communal table. Google searches for elope are at an all-time high, and elopement photography is among the top ten wedding search terms on Pinterest, where inspiration for wedding dresses, tablescapes, and escort cards is born. But why? Why are elopements, intimate ceremonies, and nontraditional weddings suddenly so popular? How did we get to a place where a couple (so many couples) would rather say their vows on a mountaintop than in a room full of one hundred fifty people?

As a journalist, I love digging into questions like these. And as a millennial—the generation leading the shift in what is considered an elopement—I can relate. I experienced the economic effects of the 2008 recession and have a decent chunk of student loan debt, making the thought of dropping $30,000 on one day highly unappealing (this is in US dollars, which are used for all costs in the book).

In 2020, I watched the COVID-19 pandemic steamroll through wedding season, canceling weddings worldwide and forcing couples to majorly trim their guest lists. It also brought to the forefront what really matters on a wedding day (turns out, many couples were happy to part with the planning).

Yet I understand that weddings are deeply important for some families, and many couples not only have the means to cover them financially, but also genuinely want to spend their money on a big celebration. I just have personally never had that urge. I don’t like being the center of attention, and the idea of selecting bridesmaids and having them endure months of group texts about my wedding sounds, quite frankly, terrible. Suffice it to say, the idea of eloping naturally fits in my wheelhouse.

To figure out why this trend was growing and morphing into far more than just the courthouse ceremony, I started by looking at the literal definition of elope. Hundreds of years ago, when the word was first used circa 1593, it had a distinct meaning: to leave one’s spouse for a lover. This definition likely came about due to the fact that many (teenage) marriages were arranged, so the only way to live happily ever after was to secretly run away with someone you actually loved, à la Romeo and Juliet. By the seventeenth century, elope had come to mean to run away with a romantic interest, which is what most people think of when they hear the word today.

But the definition has continued to evolve. The wordsmiths over at Merriam-Webster have shared that the meaning of elope is shifting toward a small destination wedding. They also say that it means one that isn’t financially insane, or lets you eliminate guests you would rather not invite, both of which are funny—and true. Overall, they acknowledge that the changing definition is just part of the journey of language and ask, Can you accept that? We do.

I do too. I’ve interviewed dozens of couples who defined elopement on their own terms in order to gain insight on why and how they did it. One couple turned the annual family vacation to St. Simons Island into their wedding celebration; it was the bride’s second marriage, and she wanted it to be nothing like her big, traditional first wedding. Another had a true elopement—just the two of them and a photographer—to Florence, where they had fallen in love while studying abroad. They chose to do it this way simply because they live a quiet life and never even considered having a larger affair. Others had engagement parties-turned-surprise-ceremonies, just to flip the script.

Overall, couples’ reasons for eloping or having an intimate wedding fell into three main buckets (aside from the pandemic, which is covered in chapter 11): to save money; not wanting to be the center of attention; or wishing to avoid (or halt) the stress of wedding planning. Stress was ultimately the biggest reason—one heavily supported, interestingly enough, by a survey from Zola, a company whose business model relies on couples to plan big weddings and register for things ranging from KitchenAid mixers to dog-walking services to airline gift cards. The survey found that out of five hundred engaged or newly married couples, 96 percent said wedding planning was stressful, and 55 percent considered eloping or calling the whole thing off.

Calling the whole thing off.

The survey also mentions that 86 percent of respondents suffered, on average, more than three stress-induced symptoms, including skin breakouts, hair loss, loss of sex drive, insomnia, and headaches. All from planning what is essentially a fancy event.

If you feel like you’re heading down the path toward no sleep and hair loss, or want to avoid it from the start, this book will help guide and shape your wedding day into one that is truly special and unique, done your way. Throughout, I use the word elopement to refer to all forms of nontraditional weddings, not just running off to Bali. It’s divided into eleven chapters, starting with two on the logistics of planning an elopement and navigating the world of vendors, followed by nine chapters that focus on a different way to go about it, with a couple’s story in each. I’ve also included time lines, checklists, tips, and how-tos. It’s a useful resource that’s fun too. Because that’s what it’s really about: truly enjoying your day.

And, as my landlord—who got married in a law office above a Chipotle—puts it, It’s about the love, not the fluff.

Cheers to love, and to celebrating it your way.

CHAPTER 1

The Blueprint

Lauren & Lindsay

If I told you that Lindsay and I eloped, would you believe me?

So begins a caption on Instagram that Lauren wrote one year to the day after she and her now-husband, Lindsay, stood in a civil celebrant’s living room, facing each other and clasping hands. The lights were dimmed, and outside it was dumping cold February rain. They looked at each other and thought, This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

What was supposed to happen was they would marry on a sweeping estate with a grand staircase seemingly built for wedding portraits. She’d get ready with a glam squad and wear an elegant white robe as she popped Champagne with her bridesmaids. Her father would walk her down the aisle of a garden on the estate’s grounds, her 120-inch [3 m] cathedral-length veil trailing behind her. At the reception, Lindsay would scoop her up and her strapless satin gown would billow around them.

Instead, seven months ahead of their planned wedding date, they stood in a stranger’s living room and were legally married with no witnesses. Lauren wore a white blazer. There were no rings. We wanted it to be as transactional as possible, says Lauren. They went home and had their first dance in their kitchen to the song they had picked out for their real wedding, Let It Be Me by Ray LaMontagne: When all your faith is gone / And it feels like you can’t go on / Let it be me.

Lindsay, a native of Australia, had come to the United States in 2016 on a special work visa called the L1A visa. This visa allows overseas companies to transfer executives and managers for a temporary stay, and it cannot be transferred to another employer.

Around four months after arriving in the United States, Lindsay met Lauren on Tinder. On their first date at a corner pizza bistro, they closed down the restaurant, then went to a place nearby for dessert and closed that down too. Early in their relationship, they joked about getting married at the courthouse or applying to be on the show 90 Day Fiancé, which would—jokes aside—ensure that Lindsay was safe to stay in the United States for good.

Thinking back, we didn’t really talk about it being an issue, because we figured that by the time his visa was going to run out through work, we would be married, and he could go the green card route, says Lauren, reiterating, we really didn’t think it was going to be an issue.

Then, in late 2018, just after Lindsay and Lauren got engaged and were planning their wedding, his situation at work became unstable. The company he’d been with for more than eight years, and had received numerous awards from in Australia, was, in the United States, threatening to fire him. But according to the terms of the L1A visa, he couldn’t switch companies. He was essentially trapped. And if he were to be terminated, he would have to leave the country within twenty-four hours per the terms of the visa.

One day in early February 2019, Lindsay texted Lauren, seemingly out of the blue. He told her he thought they needed to get legally married sooner than their planned September wedding, which didn’t go over well, says Lauren. By that point, they had hired the venue, photographer, and videographer. She’d ordered her wedding dress. The last thing I ever thought I would do is elope.

But she knew it was the right, realistic, responsible thing to do. Their county courthouse doesn’t hold civil ceremonies, so they found a civil celebrant on the county clerk’s website and, a week later, eloped in her living room.

On her social media post a year later—which is how they broke the news that they had secretly eloped to everyone, including immediate family—she explained: The main reason we decided to share this is to shed some light on the US immigration process. Most people think that once you are married, you have a green card and can work automatically. No. Until you file a green card application, nothing changes.

Lauren and Lindsay hired an immigration lawyer to guide them through the process. If you make any mistakes on the paperwork, your application is canceled and you lose the money it cost to apply: $1,200 for the actual green card, and $600 for a physical, vaccinations, and fingerprints. The lawyer cost $2,500. Lauren had to prove that she could support them both to ensure that Lindsay wouldn’t go on government assistance programs should he lose his job. If this were to happen, his green card application would get canceled, given the conditions of his work visa.

It took five months for Lindsay to receive his temporary Employment Authorization Document (EAD), which allowed him to leave his job and work anywhere in the United States. When he opened it up in the mail, we were jumping up and down, says Lauren. It felt like we were safe now. Something with so much power to upheave our lives seemed so easy and quick once it was done.

The EAD arrived exactly one week before the wedding they had been planning for nearly a year was to take place. And take place it did. Lindsay’s family flew in from Australia. Lauren got her glam squad and popped Champagne surrounded by her bridesmaids. Her father walked her down the aisle in the formal garden of Airlie, a countryside estate in Northern Virginia, where Martin Luther King Jr. once hosted civil rights meetings. At the end of the ceremony, as Lauren and Lindsay walked down the aisle as husband and wife, guests cheered and waved small Australian flags. In a black-and-white photo from the reception that Lauren posted on their one-month anniversary, her arms are wrapped tightly around Lindsay’s neck as he lifts her off the ground, her dress a blurry cascade of satin.

Lauren & Lindsay’s Fine Print

LIVE: Springfield, Virginia

WORK: Lauren is the director of culture and inclusion at Enabled Intelligence, and Lindsay is director of recruitment at 11th Hour Service.

AGES WHEN THEY ELOPED: They were both thirty-three.

LAUREN’S FIRST IMPRESSION: He was genuine, funny, handsome, and we had so much in common. Not just interests but what we wanted out of life . . . family, house, dog. I was laughing the entire first date and could just tell that he was a good person. After all the messed-up guys I had dated in the past, something as basic as finding a good person became a top priority on my list.

LINDSAY’S FIRST IMPRESSION: "She looked very strong, powerful, not ditzy, well looked after, there for a reason, very attractive. Better looking in person than in her photos. She was very direct and was asking me questions with intent (to find out if I was right for her) versus just fluffy small talk questions. Luckily