To elope or not, that is the big question
Igot in a fight with my mother about if I would invite certain family friends to my wedding. She then got offended I wasn’t going to have a DJ and save $500 by plugging my phone in which does the same thing. I am yet to tell her I plan to serve my wedding guests pizza.
It was around this time at our Sunday brunch I thought ‘eloping is looking real nice’.
Although I’m a chatty Cathy, standing up in front of a crowd with all eyes on me kind of terrifies me. My inner-introvert can think of nothing worse.
Eloping on the other hand with just us and a celebrant and no one to witness me Kim Kardashian ugly cry, well my inner-introvert loves that idea.
When I got engaged in front of the Manhattan skyline, I was over the moon. I had absolutely no idea my partner Will was planning to propose, and in my favourite city on earth no less.
He nailed it. I was excited to start planning the wedding.
I’d love to say I’m a chilled girl that hasn’t thought about her wedding day at all, but that’s a lie, I have. Like, a lot.
How hard can it be, I thought. We can keep costs down. We won’t have that many people. No one will care what we do. Oh how wrong was I.
Initially when my partner and I made a guest list, we were up to 150 people within minutes. It’s easy to get carried away with who you feel obliged to invite. Luckily, or unlucky for some, we managed to cull the list down to about 90.
Ditching the big family shindig is becoming increasingly popular with elopement planning businesses popping up around the world.
Scott Thoroughgood of Sunshine Weddings in Queenstown said they moved from doing bigger weddings to specialise in elopements.
‘‘Most elopements we get people who just want something special amongst themselves or can’t come to an agreement with families so think ‘bugger the wedding, let’s elope’,’’ he said.
The average cost of a wedding in New Zealand is $30,000. That’s a good chunk of a house deposit.
As much as I want a Pinterest-worthy, for the ‘gram wedding, I’m not prepared to spend that kind of dough. Nor do I have it.
Every little thing adds up, though, and before you know it you’ve got $2000 worth of glitter confetti in your Amazon cart because of a vision you had.
You then have to think about putting on a feast for guests and making sure they are well lubricated. That’s the expensive part. We have looked at caterers that range anywhere from $30 per person to $90 per person. See why I want to serve pizza?
Seeing a good friend of mine elope to Mexico and how it cost them a fraction of a regular wedding made me envious and begin to start thinking about eloping myself.
Having been in the wedding planning process for a couple of months now, let me confess my stress.
Venues tend to book out fast, forcing you to think about things a lot sooner than I would have liked to. I thought looking at venues would be the easy part but it’s proving the hardest.
With venues come size restrictions, liquor licenses, outrageous hire fees, thinking of a rain-proof back up, and is there accommodation nearby. Everyone has an opinion on what you should do but at the end of it they’ll say ‘‘but it’s your wedding’’.
There will be aunties and uncles and cousins and family friends who apparently always ask about you and even though you never see them and they can only be described as being on the periphery of your life, they will be so hurt if they aren’t invited.
But if Great Aunt Erma gets an invite then all 13 of her offspring have to come and if they come then cousin Reggie just has to be there too.
Ultimately, my partner and I love our family dearly and can’t imagine the day without them so we won’t be selfish and cut those that care out of the day. It is about deciding if we invite everyone or dig our heels in and just have our nearest and dearest.
Also, I love a shindig and I love a speech and we have so many special friends and family who we can’t wait to do the YMCA with until the early hours of the morning. Put these together and we have ourselves a traditional type wedding that we wouldn’t give up for an easy elopement.
We’ll just have a few extra vinos in the mean time to deal with the stress.