Lots of couples struggle with how to make their elopement special. Whether you’re choosing to have a simple courthouse wedding or having an extravagant destination elopement, maybe you’re struggling with how to make it memorable. I have all the answers for that conundrum for you here.
Plan Ahead
Sure, it’s an elopement and you might want to be spontaneous about certain things, but to make it special you can do some work ahead of time.
Write letters to each other
You’re engaged and you have a lot of things going on. Write letters to each other or jot down notes to write a letter every time you have a thought about your upcoming wedding.
Things you might want to write about –
– What are you looking forward to doing on your wedding day?
– Have you learned anything about your person since you’ve gotten engaged?
– Is there something about them that makes you super grateful you’re marrying them that they might now know about?
– Are there patterns you want to break? Or rituals you love?
Those are just a few prompts you could use for these letters. Make time on your timeline to present these letters to each other. Make sure your photographer captures the moment you both read the notes.
Dress to the nines
Just because you might not be in a formal setting doesn’t mean you can’t dress like you are. Dress how you want and take amazing photos, you deserve it. This is your wedding, after all!
Ask people who won’t be there but who are important to you to contribute photos or letters for you to share the day of your elopement.
Maybe it’ll just be the two of you or you’re scaling your guestlist way down, but either way ask the people who are most important to you to write you letters or give you physical prints of their favorite photos of you (together or separately). Ask them to provide context and to send well wishes for your elopement.
Things you might want to ask them to write –
– Advice for your marriage or on how to deal with each other.
– Share their favorite stories of you both or individually.
– Send a picture with a story about what happened when that photo was taken.
Build a playlist.
Hop on Spotify and start an elopement playlist. Add songs that remind you of each other. Include a song for every happy moment you experience together. Add a song for the hard times that you survive together. Ask the people you love most to add a song to dedicate to you. When your elopement is complete you’ll have a soundtrack of your love that you can continue to add to while you’re creating a life together.
Order Food Y’all Love
I don’t just mean for your main meals like dinner, make sure that everything that day is on the list of things you’d eat on any given day because it’s your favorite. Hit Costco before your trip for your elopement and grab all your favorite snacks, stay hydrated with all of your favorite drinks. Order desserts from your favorite vendors, grab coffee from your favorite cafe. Fill yourself up with all of the food you love and nothing you don’t.
Meet with Your Officiant
One thing you can do to make your ceremony special is by meeting with your officiant to go over what is said during the ceremony. Ask that your story is included in the ceremony. Write your own vows. Include a unity ceremony.
Hire Vendors that Maximize Your Time & Enjoyment Together
If neither of you particularly like cooking, hire a private chef or have food catered. Let’s say you want to canoodle in the backseat of a jeep on your 4x4ing adventure, hire a driver. Hire a planner/coordinator so that you don’t have to think about what to do next, you’re just following your guide. Book a photographer and videographer that allow you to just be you, with whom you feel most comfortable with being completely yourselves so that you can have images that reflect exactly who you are. Every one of these vendors will give you time to be all up in each other’s faces for your entire elopement.
Schedule More Time Together
Your elopement doesn’t just have to be about the ceremony. Your elopement is way more than that, it’s about all the time you get to intentionally spend together. So schedule all the time you can spend together. Your elopement can be an entire day or it can be an entire week. It can even be an entire month long vacation. You set the standard here.
Indulge in Every Moment
During your elopement, you can take advantage of every moment. Don’t stress the timeline. You’re getting married and it will happen on your time no matter what. Not everything will go to plan every time, go with it. Be fluid. Be like water.
Keep Parts of Your Ritual You Love
If you both love grabbing coffee together, fit it into your timeline. Do you love the pancakes your future spouse makes? Make it part of your timeline. If you love to watch the sunset together, make sure you fit that onto your timeline. Do all the things you love on your elopement.
Getting Ready
Build these moments into your timeline, and plan whether you’ll do this together or separately. If you’re doing your own makeup and hair, do a trial on yourself and time yourself so you know how much time you’ll need to do it. Hire your trusted barber to come line you up before your ceremony. Hire a makeup artist and hair dresser so you don’t have to do any of it yourself.
Decide on How You’ll Do a First Look
You can see each other before your ceremony or choose to see yourself as your ceremony is beginning. Maybe you don’t want to see each other but you want to read your letters to each other, or hold hands, or say prayer, or talk to each other on opposite sides of a wall or a boulder. Have someone guide you while you’re both blindfolded. Whatever a first look looks like to you, do it.
Schedule Some Alone Time
Ask your photographer, if you have one, if you can have some alone time or some time without them being close enough for you to notice (far away candids are totally possible). You can choose this time to play a game, have a drink, spark up, read your letters, pray, meditate, look at your photos, get steamy in a hot springs together, hit a spa. Whatever you want to do together, do that.
Include Your VIP
The people and pets you love should be there.
Involve Your Pets
In some places you can have your pets sign your marriage certificate. If you can’t bring them with you, bring your marriage certificate home to be signed by them.
Live Stream or Create a Film
You can include the people who can’t be there by live streaming if internet access is possible or having a film created for them. You can achieve this by having a videographer or just by filming parts of the day on your phone.
