Why I Eloped And you should, too.

Slate ^ | September 20, 2012 | Torie Bosch

[C19fan]

When I recently called my mother to tell her that I was getting married, she was ecstatic. After all, my boyfriend, Chris, and I had been together for nearly 10 years, so he had long been part of the family. “When’s the big day?” she asked me. “In about 20 minutes!” I said, trying to sound perky instead of scared. Though we had decided to get married a few weeks prior, we told almost no one beforehand—not even our parents. And now, we were standing just outside the office of the man who would perform the ceremony.

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I love a good wedding just as I love any party with an open bar and “The Electric Slide.” But unless you are wealthy, come from a family that has never known strife, enjoy giving up an entire year of your life to planning, and can smile in the face of any possible wedding disaster (and mean it, not just for pictures), you should elope. That’s because weddings—even small-scale ones—are more pageant than sincerity.

[knarf]

I think it IS “green stuff” in the original Chaldean.

[NEMDF]

For your wedding, you wore a fancy dress of the bride’s? Then who was the bride and why were you wearing a dress?

[NEMDF]

green glop:
Pistachio instant pudding
Canned fruit cocktail
Canned pineapple tidbits or crushed
Cool whip

Don’t drain the fruit. Use 2 boxes of pudding, dump in the fruit and mix well. Then fluff it up with cool whip. Can add miniature marshmallows (white or those pretty pastel ones) if desired.

[knarf]

I KNEW there was a reason out there somewhere for me to continue putting off dieting.

[VanDeKoik]

Waste of money, and tons of stress.

Have a simple service, and share some cake.

[NEMDF]

It is very easy, takes like 3 minutes to make, let it chill for a couple hours. SHARE it with friends or family.

[Biggirl]

Had my beloved SO not passed away suddenly, we would most likely have a simple wedding, dressed up in nice Sunday worship clothes and look at heading south with the cats and us.

Congrats.

[nickcarraway]

I would recommend a destination wedding in Las Vegas.

Wow, I couldn't agree more. I have been to Las Vegas, and I can't think of a worse place in the world to start a marriage. Why even bother getting married, if you are going to get married there? (unless you live there)

[Coldwater Creek]

It’s been around for years. The receipe name is Watergate Salad. Who knows why......

[MissNomer]

Had my beloved SO not passed away suddenly, we would most likely have a simple wedding, dressed up in nice Sunday worship clothes and look at heading south with the cats and us.

I am so sorry for your loss. A dear friend of mine lost her fiance less than two months before their wedding (also a simple one, BTW). It has been very hard for her. I'll pray for you both.

[SeaHawkFan]

Not everyone who goes to Vegas does so for immoral purposes, or even to gamble.

I’ve been several times and never places a bet nor done anything I would want to hide from anyone.

[EggsAckley]

Oops. I meant Minister’s wife. She was a life-long friend and loaned me a beautiful dress.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

When Liberals do a thing a certain way, everybody else is supposed to do it that way, too.

[rochester_veteran]

30 years ago come October, my wife and I were married. We lived in Denver, far away from our families and we didn’t have much money and went the simple route. We got married by the JP in Aurora on a Friday and had a nice lunch afterwards with my wife’s maid of honor, her sister and her husband and my best man and his wife. I was working on a maintenance crew of an apartment complex at the time and my boss gave us the party room in the clubhouse to use free of charge and we had our reception there the next day on Saturday. We provided the food and drink and some people even brought their own bottles. :-) It seems like yesterday, 30 years and 3 kids later, it flies by fast!

[jwalsh07]

25 bucks to the Justice of the Peace in Belton, Texas. Still married 40 years later.

[Reddy]

Exactly. You can sin in your own home/town just as much as you can sin in Vegas.

Vegas is Disneyland for grown-ups... that doesn’t mean you have to do bad things while you are there.

[iowamark]

License in hand, we walked across the street to a law office between a sandwich shop and a homeless outreach organization where a civil celebrant would marry us for $50 in cash. Does that sound unromantic? Maybe a little sad? It wasn’t. The five-minute ceremony, conducted by a warm, gregarious man who has reportedly married more than 40,000 couples, hit the important notes, with nary a tedious reading from a relative or pledging to a God I don’t believe in. Then we headed off to a rooftop bar to call our family and friends with the good news. Oh, and we were married.

Fifty dollars for five minutes from a "civil celebrant"?

[Age of Reason]

I agree.

I think extravagant weddings are an attempt to compensate for an inner suspicion that the marriage of the two people involved is not a good idea.

I wonder if anyone’s done research to see if there’s a correlation between expensive weddings and divorce rates and between oddball weddings (getting married in a non-traditional manner or setting, like getting married at the beach or while skydiving) and divorce rates.

I’ll bet there’s a correlation.

[nurees]

We drove to Vermont a couple of weeks before Christmas. Stayed at a B&B. The housekeeper was the town Justice of the peace and the Inn owner stood as a witness. Beautiful evening ceremony in a dark paneled library in front of a huge fire. The chef at the Inn made us a small pear and white chocolate cake and we went out for dinner. Stayed a week, lots of snow, no phones, friendly people. Loved it and would not have traded it for anything.

[Age of Reason]

A woman who has sex with a man outside of marriage, is the female equivalent of the male “nice guy”: someone who gives away the store to opposite sex in the hope of gaining the person’s love.

And then is puzzled and resentful when they are rejected instead.