My fiance doesn't want the fuss of a wedding at all and would prefer we just ran down to city hall and signed everything. But I'm a bit more sentimental and would love the memories and special feeling of a wedding day. We both have small families and our wedding wouldn't be larger than 30 guests- really tiny!
FI comes from a very traditional family, and his sister got married 2 years ago in a small, classic ceremony/reception. They would think it very weird if we eloped. My parents eloped and have always told me they consider a wedding a waste of money- wouldn't we rather have help toward a down payment on a house or something? Seriously, I've been hearing this since I was 12. And so you'd think that FI and I would have the opposite opinions about weddings, but here we are.
The idea of having a private ceremony is appealing to me- FI and I are pretty private people and that part of eloping feels right. I've always thought, "well, we'll just have a party for everyone after!" but I'm not sure how to go about it. Would it just be easier to have the ceremony and reception together, traditionally? Or would a reception-type event after our elopement be okay? And how would we even do that- book a reception type location? So confused.