DEAR PRUDENCE

WITH ADVICE ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS AT HOME, WORK & BEYOND

Dear Prudence: My partner and I are getting married in a couple of days. We have asked some dear friends to officiate, but we’re only having a bare minimum of legal witnesses.

We have not told our families yet and only told a few of our other friends. We’ve always wanted to elope. My relationship with my parents is distant, and my controlling father behaved so badly during my siblings’ weddings that I knew I didn’t want anything like that for myself. My partner really hates being the center of attention, so he never wanted a big, traditional wedding.

But I am anxious about people’s reactions, especially from our families, when we tell them we eloped. We’re sending out paper announcements after the fact and inviting many friends and family members to come celebrate with us in the spring.

We do love our families despite

the strain, but we wanted to do our wedding our way. How can we most gently break the news to our unsuspecting families and the rest of our friends?

If some people react poorly and express hurt feelings, how should we respond to, and deal with, them not taking the news well?

— Eloping Confession

Dear Eloping Confession: Waiting to send out announcements until after the fact is a good idea.

Even if your family members have the worst of all possible reactions, there’s a limit to how worked up they can get over something that’s already happened, whereas if you tell them beforehand they might try to use whatever leverage or tactics they can think of to try to get you to change your mind.

You might set aside some time to call your more high-maintenance family members the day the an

nouncements go out so they feel like they’ve had a slightly more exclusive, personalized announcement directly from the happy couple.

Let them know they’re about to receive a formal announcement and invitation to a celebration later in the year but you just couldn’t wait to tell them the news yourself. Gush a little! You just got married — you’re entitled to gush!

If some of them express sadness or regret or even frustration, you can be sympathetic and offer them a listening ear, up to a point:

“I get that you were really looking forward to (aspect of traditional wedding). It was a difficult call to make, but we decided to elope because it was the right decision for us as a couple. And we can’t wait to get to celebrate with everyone in (month).”

Send questions to Dear Prudence, aka Slate’s Daniel Mallory Ortberg, at prudence@slate.com.