The rise of the runaway wedding
With more couples now eloping, Cara McGoogan meets the mums who didn’t get to see their daughters walk down the aisle
When Courtney Maddison told her mum that she would be getting married in New York and that she wouldn’t be inviting family, her mother, Karen, was, understandably, rather upset. “I would have liked to have been there at least to walk her down the aisle,” the 56-year-old says. “It really tugged at my heart strings.
“But I’ve always brought Courtney up to be herself and do things the way she wished. If that’s what made her happy, then I was happy for her.”
Karen is one of an increasing number of mothers who will never fix their daughters’ veils or pose for photos with them in their wedding dresses, thanks to the burgeoning trend for elopements. No longer the preserve of young couples hotfooting it to Gretna Green in a bid to escape disapproving parents, would-be-weds are now planning romantic getaways without families who would love to be there.
Courtney, 28, and her husband, Chris Doherty, 34, started planning their wedding at the beginning of 2016, and 10 months ahead of the big day, told family that they would not be invited. “I did feel a bit guilty,” the retail manager explains, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that a huge celebration just wasn’t for them. Her mother expressed how sad she was “that she couldn’t be there, and that it did hurt,” Courtney remembers. “But she never pressured us to stay at home or have the big wedding.” The pair ended up getting married in Central Park, trading the traditional wedding buffet for a slice of pizza and a yellow cab ride home.
Though Karen had always hoped she would be there to celebrate her eldest child’s wedding, she didn’t want to upset her daughter by telling her how devastated she really was. “I could see she was concerned about how I would feel about it,” she recalls. “I had a twinge that I wished I was there, and I told her that.”
Although they didn’t ask Karen to come to New York with them, Courtney made sure her mum felt a part of the celebrations – shopping for her dress together.
Yet not all parents are so forgiving: Janessa White, the chief executive and co-founder of Simply Eloped, an elopement planning agency, recalls a young British couple who had to ditch their US-based union after their parents discovered their plans.
“They had everything arranged but when their parents found out, they had to cancel,” says Janessa. “The parents said, ‘This isn’t OK – you’re having a large wedding’.” Still, Janessa’s company, which is based in New York, has seen a 400 per cent increase in the number of British couples crossing the Atlantic for a low-key celebration this year compared with 2016, while in Cornwall, BoHo Elopements has seen demand for its services double.
White puts this down to the exorbitant cost of weddings – a survey by Brides magazine put the national average at £27,000; not far shy of the average £33,000 deposit first-time buyers now need to get on the property ladder.
Interestingly, Stevie Campbell, Courtney’s cousin, opted to elope, too – deciding to get hitched in a Las Vegas wedding with her husband, Steve. Her mother, Ann – Karen’s sister – cried upon hearing that she wouldn’t be receiving an invitation, and was left wondering “why she had kept it a secret, because we’re really close.” Stevie reasoned that, having never planned to marry, she didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of a large ceremony, instead deciding that they would tie the knot in a $250 affair while on holiday in Las Vegas.
Ann has come to terms with not being at Stevie’s wedding – but has warned that her son is under no circumstances allowed to follow suit.
“We recommend that couples consider letting their parents in on the secret before it goes totally public,” Janessa explains, adding that two thirds of the British couples she helps do marry without their parents presence. “Parents should keep in mind that wedding trends are rapidly changing,” she says.
“Couples are choosing to reject traditions in favour of doing their wedding their own way. While big weddings with lots of family present were once a very common thing, now small weddings with only the couple in attendance are happening more and more.”
White says there are “major perks” to this departure from convention, namely cost. “Parents should remember that, if they aren’t invited to their child’s elopement, it certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t loved. Rather, it means that the tides of wedding preferences are shifting.”
Most couples pay for their own ceremony, she adds, though “if the parents do cover the elopement costs, it’s much, much cheaper than a traditional wedding.”
“When we were trying to plan a small wedding in the UK, we were struggling to bring it in at under £15,000,” explains Samantha Burgess, 32, who eloped with husband, Tom Gardner, in New York last month. “It was getting away from us in terms of cost.” The pair decided to ditch the extensive guest list and fiddly decorations, to splash out on their trip instead: flying business class, staying in a nice hotel for the week, eating at top restaurants, and hiring a photographer and videographer to record the moment they said “I do”.
Their decision wasn’t purely financial – the pair had been engaged for three and-a-half years before they married – but family bereavements and difficulties finding a venue in London meant their plans were delayed and, eventually, done away with. “If I’m totally honest, I saw the flicker of disappointment that went across both our parents’ faces [when we told them],” Burgess says. “Although my parents would have loved for us to have a big wedding and big party… I knew that all they wanted was for us to get married. My dad kept saying, ‘Make it legal, make it legal’.”
Her mother, Gay, “would have liked to see them take their vows,” she concedes, but agreed to make do with the wedding video, and a party arranged at the Ivy Cafe for close family. “We still did all the traditional things,” says Gay. “We had speeches, so her dad got to say all the things he wanted to say.
“One of the best weddings I’ve ever been to was my own,” she adds. “But I think things have changed quite dramatically. These days, [people] don’t want big dos where you have lots of friends of the parents who you’re never going to see again.”
Samantha was happy that her parents could be involved in some way: “They still got their party, which is what they really wanted. As long as they got to celebrate, that’s what was important.”
For Karen, while the sting of not being at her daughter’s wedding remains, she accepts that their celebration “was special in that it was just Courtney and Chris.
“I would really have liked to have been there, but it was about them. That’s what marriage is about.”
‘I would really have liked to have been there, but marriage is about them’