10 Reasons to Elope
Colorado Elopement Videographer
Gives 10 Reasons for Eloping and why it may be the right thing for you on your wedding day!
1) You Can Focus on Yourselves!
You're making an experience that's meaningful to you and special to you and your partner. There’s no “shoulds”. You don’t have to get a certain decorative tablecloth for grandma. You don’t have to accommodate 150 other people on your big day. Everything can be stripped away so that you focus on you and your partner on the most magical day. I feel like we often forget that the wedding day is about the marriage, not about the event. You’re there to celebrate the love you two share, not celebrate your ability to design an overpriced wedding venue with expensive items so that your guests can party and judge you on your choice of flowers. With all of this stripped away, you can focus on the marriage and the love you two share.
2) There are no rules!
If you want to get married in hiking pants and a climbing harness that's amazing! You can totally do it, wear whatever you want, do whatever you want!
This is my favorite reason for choosing to elope. Sometimes weddings can get so bogged down in tradition that you don’t even know why you’re choosing to include something as part of your wedding day, it’s just assumed that you should. For elopements, you can switch it all off and re-introduce traditions, activities or meaningful moments one by one. Pause the ceremony and play guitar for your partner. Do your favorite hike and get married at the top. There’s so many cool ways to incorporate YOU into the wedding day that by leaving behind all the rules, you can be yourselves and design your wedding day to reflect your relationship.
Jackie, the bride in the photo to the right, chose to get married in a velvet dark green dress. Just goes to show you can do whatever!
3) Celebrate with an adventure!
You're marrying each other you're spending the rest of your life together, that's so exciting! Why not celebrate by going out on some cool hikes, going surfing, doing fun things that you love to do together?! Similar to the previous reason, this is where you can really start to get creative. When I’m talking with couples, I always recommend including one of their favorite activities in their wedding day. My packages include a full day worth of coverage so, as long as you’re there, I can be there too. I do this because I want to encourage couples to make the most of their day. Design this day so it reflects you and your love but also your passion, excitement, joy and happiness. Do what makes you happy, whether that’s hiking, yoga, surfing, journaling, climbing or swimming.
4) Cost!
Average weddings are expensive, elopements are traditionally a lot cheaper. Traditionally weddings run upwards of $30,000 while elopements range from $5,000 - $10,000 depending on where you go and what you do :) Although this can be a selling point for a lot of people, I always encourage couples to look at it slightly different. I like to say that pretend you’re not eloping.
Pretend you have $30,000,
What would you spend it on for your elopement?
Do you want to rent a jeep?
Stay at a fancy AirBnB?
Go skiing for a couple of days on either end of your elopement?
Buy the fanciest wedding clothes?
Book the best videographer in Colorado?
Even if you are reading this and saying yes to every single one of these, it’s pretty likely that it’s STILL going to cost less than a traditional wedding. You’re not paying an absurd amount for a venue, you’re saving on on the little decorations that add up, you’re saving on food for 150 guests. You will save money by eloping, it’s inevitable. So, don’t let money be a factor in your decision making process, go all out and make it amazing!
5) Intimacy and privacy!
If you want to get married alone in the woods together with nobody else around you can totally do that just have a really intimate and meaningful and private experience just the two of you. You don't have to do an elopement alone either. Many people think of elopements as "running away together" and getting married in Vegas but you can also get married with your close family and your close friends around and it can still be intimate, meaningful and impactful to you even if you're not surrounded by other guests.
These two got married, just the two of them, and look at how amazing it was!
6) Extended honeymoon!
If you're eloping, use it as a chance to have your honeymoon as well. Elope on a weekday and use the weekends on either side of your big day to go out and have a ball!
I mean, come on. If you’re in Colorado you might as well make the most of it and see all that there is to see. You got the sand boarding at Great Sand Dunes, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, mountain biking in Aspen, sailing on Dillon Reservoir, rock climbing in Boulder, cross country skiing in Crested Butte, rafting in Buena Vista, fly fishing on the Arkansas River. There’s an endless amount of activities to do in Colorado so why not extended your trip a little bit and take advantage of the amazing locations all around Colorado for some added adventure surrounding your elopement.
7) Little stress and anxiety!
Planning an elopement is a lot less stressful than planning a big wedding. Period. I could go into all the tiny decisions that make up why planning a traditional wedding can be stressful but I’ll let you watch this video so you can see my smiling face tell you! 2:34 on the video will show you everything you’re looking for.
If you’re not a visual learning and like to read…
Okay, fine. I’ll tell you.
You got to decide, DJ vs. Band. Refine bridal party attire. Guest list for 150 people. Seating chart. Tents. Secure overpriced venue. Linens. Decor. Lighting. Pillows for the ring bearer…. There’s just a never ending list of things to do and eloping strips a lot of that away and makes it all about you.
8) It's environmentally friendly!
This may not be the first thing that you think of when thinking about an elopement versus a traditional wedding because maybe you're thinking about flying somewhere or maybe the environment's not necessarily on your mind, but a traditional wedding has a lot of trash and a lot of waste so by eloping, you're minimizing the buildup of unnecessary waste. Before working as a Colorado elopement videographer, I worked as a caterer for a number of wedding companies and discovered how bad the trash is first hand. During a typical wedding, roughly 400-600 lbs. of waste is produced -- that's based on a guest list of roughly 100-120 people!! So, even if you fly somewhere you can purchase carbon offsets and maybe even do some good to the planet by eloping, that’s pretty rad.
9) Less family drama!
For some, it's a huge relief knowing that they don't have to have their extended family and the drama of their immediate family getting in the way of their wedding day. Family can be contentious for a lot of people so by eloping you’re able to side-step all of that and just focus on you and starting your new family together. If it does make you sad to think about not having your siblings or parents there on your wedding day, that’s okay! Bring them along. Just because you’re eloping doesn’t mean that you can’t have a few guests. It makes it that much more meaningful too when you only have your core squad there to celebrate alongside you :)
10) epic pictures and videos!!
I feel like this one doesn’t need too much explaining, just check out this video and you’ll understand:
SO, SHOULD I ELOPE?
This is a great question and definitely an important one! I would say that if you have an adventurous spirit and desire to have an intimate experience with the focus on you and not your guests on your wedding day then choosing an elopement is the perfect option for you! It’s a tough question to think through but eloping is all about having a meaningful and stress free experience all the way from the planning stage to the signing of your marriage license Starting your lives together on an epic adventure and committing your lives together in a place you’ve always dreamed of can be an extremely positive and liberating experience for a lot of people.
If you’re looking for an elopement videographer (and photographer AND planner, we do all of it!) then we would be so incredibly honored to be a part of your special day!
You can contact us >HERE< or at hello@castlehousevideography.com and we cannot wait to talk to you about your elopement!