Courthouse Elopement Before the Wedding

This would be tough to pull off. You'll want to tell your closest friends so that's a few people, your immediate families so there are a few more people and then anyone who doesn't make the cut and hears about it later would feel left out that they were only invited to your wedding reenactment. I know I would feel cheated if I was invited to my close friend or family member's wedding only to find out that I wasn't invited to the real event.

You also might stress over the details of your smaller courthouse ceremony: Should I get some flowers? should I get a blow out? what will we wear, etc.

It's completely natural to feel the way you're feeling now and you could always scrap the bigger wedding and elope instead. I just think that doing both would be more trouble than it's worth.

Getting secretly married won’t fix your cake and flower issues or the officiant issues. Your issues are with the reception, not the wedding. Skip it and don’t stress yourself out.

View Quoted Comment "Lying to your guests thing doesn't matter."
Wow just wow that people on this forum are OK with lying to your friends and family.

Boy do I regret making this post

View Quoted Comment Mikaela: Please take this as someone who's a little older in on this forum in perhaps a bit of mom advice: Do what you want with in reason but please please no lying to people people will understand that you had a small ceremony now we're going out to dinner cause that's all your stress level can take.
Come back later and have a vowel renewal or a simple celebration of your vows, but please......no lying.

I had no idea this was a controversial topic. I guess you really do learn something new every day.

I think only you personally can know whether this will help take some of the pressure off, but just to add my little tidbit--we did this. He proposed in January, we decided this past March to get legally married for health insurance reasons, and we are planning to have our wedding/celebration/whatever you want to call it next March.

We didn't have some sort of secret event and try to hide it. It wasn't underhanded. We just signed some papers and sent them to the courthouse. We told our family and closest friends, but I really can't imagine any of our guests being upset that we signed the paper before the wedding. Knowing our guests they'll all just be happy to celebrate our love with good food, drinks, and a party.

All that to say if you want to get legally married before your wedding, do it. Not sure if it''l help your stress levels, but I don't think it's anyone's business when you sign the papers.

View Quoted Comment You shouldn’t regret it! I think the majority of people on here are just looking out for you. We understand why you’re so anxious and want to help you come up with a solution that will reduce your anxiety, we just don’t think a secret ceremony beforehand will accomplish that.

View Quoted Comment This is what I meant when I said don’t worry about “lying to people” lol. It’s not “lying” it’s jist not their business

I suffer depression and anxiety.. I've been stressed out, crying, and overwhelmed through this entire process. I've said "Eff it, lets elope"... So many times. Our original guest list was 70 people, I always wanted a larger wedding, BUT I knew myself to know I couldn't handle that many people. We're at 42 right now. I'm nervous about it, but confident that i'll be ok.

If I had to try to plan an elopement on top of this, i'd be so ridiculously stressed out. Things WILL go wrong, it's part of life. Nothing can always go according to plan. My MOH is in Paris until about 4 days before my wedding. My sister (a BM), is out of town till the day before. It's stressful, but I can't control their jobs, or travel plans. We don't even have an officiant yet. I'm not stressing though, that's my task for next week to get sorted out. I assign a task per week, finish it, then move on. I don't get so overwhelmed and stressed. If your coordinator is that unhelpful, fire her. She works for you, you don't work for her.

They way i've battled it is to realize I can't control everything. I can only control what I can, and leave the rest up to my professional vendors. I'm not micromanaging, or emailing them constantly. It's picking my battles, so to speak.

I'm sorry to hear about all your issues! I know it's overwhelming. Here's my experience:it was like 110 degrees, the company never delivered chairs and so everyone was standing in the sun getting heat stroke. But you know what? I was happy because I was about to get married not matter what.
If you feel like eloping is the best plan, then go for it! But keep in mind that it might kill the moment for you at the formal wedding. It could make it feel like a bunch of fuss for nothing.

View Quoted Comment But honestly... Those things shouldn't matter when there you're already married or not. You're gonna stress about that stuff as long as you let yourself

Contact a local grocery store for both cake and flowers. Our cake was AMAZING and had I needed to, I could get flowers from there. Plus if you save money here, that frees you up for money for an officiant. Tbh, your friend did you a favor telling you this far out because now you can find someone who isn't afraid of public speaking.

Honestly, all this little stuff doesn't matter. Get an officiant first, and then you truly have everything you really need covered. Also, take a break from all this. Sounds like you may need to destress a bit!

I think what you really need is a better wedding planner, not just a coordinator, but someone who is GOOD (make sure to read all reviews) at making things happen. She/he will find you a bakery...florist...ect.

I don't think eloping will fix your problem...I think the major problem is planning the big event. Keep in mind things will go wrong either way so if you suffer from anxiety you should be having someone do most of this planning for you, or don't have one.

I completely understand the being super anxious and stressed by wedding planning and not realizing how super anxious and stressed it would make you until you had already made non-refundable deposits thing. That said, I think a secret elopement would be more likely to add to stress. It's one more thing to plan and you don't need that right now. FH's parents actually suggested to us that maybe we could have a small, private church ceremony and then a big reception because they saw that I was getting extremely stressed and they also thought it would be easier for my very socially awkward brother. FH and I nixed that idea because we didn't want that, we can't have a private church ceremony, the church part wasn't generally what was stressing me out and what was wasn't anything that could be skipped, and my brother is able to deal with social situations. It was all the other stupid stuff that people try to convince you that you absolutely positively need for a wedding that was stressing me. And I actually want some of that.

To deal with stress and anxiety, I tell myself that I don't care. Sometimes I don't care, but a lot of times I still do. Still, I think telling myself that helps. But there are a lot of wedding planning aspects that aren't necessary to get married that I've stopped caring as much about because I can't stay that stressed out for that long a time.

Cake - check out a local grocer. We're getting our cake through Piggly Wiggly. The lady who's making it is a friend of FFIL, so there is that connection, but a grocery store cake can work just fine.

Flowers - we're skipping them. They're nice to have, but expensive. We'll probably get me a bouquet at either a grocery store or the local florist the day before, but I decided I'd pick flowers out of a ditch before paying stupid amounts of money for them. It's completely understandable if you don't want to go that scanty on flowers, but if you scale them back you might have something that a grocery store could handle or that a florist would be more willing to work with.

I don't have any advice in regards to your bridesmaid and sister/MOH problems or your officiant problem. But I think focus on the fact that you are marrying an absolutely wonderful man and tell yourself that nothing else matters. You won't always be able to convince yourself, but it can help.

Also, if you're anything like me spending time on these forums can be oddly addictive but can also suck the energy from you, so maybe avoid them or frequent them less.

Hi there! My husband and I got court house married last July (for many various reasons - and it just worked for us!) and are having a "wedding celebration" with our family and friends this September! I still wanted the walking down the aisle with my dad and everything that goes with a wedding! Our friend will be the "officiant".. he is a stand up comedian so he's cool with talking in front of people! Try to find a friend, or even a friend of a friend, who's comfortable talking in front of a group. We're still figuring out what he will say, since we don't necessarily need to repeat our vows.. but we want him to make a nod at the fact we're already married. However, most people know we are.

We're planning a backyard type wedding, and I'm basically the planner. We'll have a day-of coordinator to rely on for the day, but mostly its just me putting it together! I also have anxiety and bits of depression, and am also planning this out of state (CO to CT)... so I feel ya. Today I had a minor breakdown.. our delegated people still haven't blocked hotel rooms, etc.. but ultimately everything works out the way it's supposed to! I'm only sharing this to let you know you aren't alone! Wedding planning is stressful, but try to enjoy it. I told myself and my husband we aren't getting crazy over it. You're planning one of the BEST days of your life! Try to enjoy every step of the way! If that means trashing and idea and starting over, so be it! The right thing will flow, and again, everything will work out! PS it sounds like your coordinator isn't doing their job... you may want to rethink that! Good luck chicky!