Three reasons to elope in secret.

Hannah and I decided to elope in secret. As a wedding photographer this is kind of against the grain of what was expected of me, in my family, in my industry. Everyone expected me to have a big elaborate wedding - but to be honest, it’s just not for me. I don’t like public speaking, and for Hannah and I, it was just a lot of money to spend in a single day. On first glances a venue was $15k and that was already more than we wanted to spend and all we had was a venue.

I’ve photographed and attended more than 600 weddings and the one thing that’s apparent is the stress planning a wedding is. So for me, it’s an expensive stressful event and that’s just not what our love is at all, it’s not what our life is, or what we like to do. Han and I are pretty easy going, we’re also spontaneous so eloping in secret very quickly became the plan for us. It sounded so easy, and it was!

As the day grew closer it did become harder to keep the secret but the more people knew, the more opinions we got. There was only stress and tears when other people got involved. Up until telling additional people, there were no tears, Han wasn’t even stressed that the first couple of dresses she’d bought online didn’t fit and were a disaster. Truly, she wasn’t even phased (it probably would’ve gotten me though!).

I made the decision not to invite or to tell my Mum, we’ve never been close and we have more differences than anything in common. I invited my Dad as my ‘family member’, they’re married so it became hard for him to keep the secret since he needed to travel from Kangaroo Island randomly on a Tuesday evening and to bring a suit with him. I was completely fine with this decision. Han and I had decided to have 1 parent, 1 friend as a witness and 1 friend as a guest. As the day drew closer I let the secret spill to a couple of people who said to me “Your Mum will be devastated!” - which I hadn’t thought she would be. She might feel sad, she might have a bit of FOMO but certainly not devastated, and I absolutely thought she would think that this was not shocking at all, since I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum - but now I had this thought in my head and it lingered, it was there when I went to sleep and it was there when I woke up. But it wasn’t, until I let our secret out and other people gave me this opinion.

So number one - the less people that know, the less opinions you’ll get.

Number two - you can get married in a month - why wait 18 months?! That’s longer than it takes to make a baby. Get married and be married sooner.

And finally, number three - it’s just for the two of you. You don’t have to create this whole day and cater to bridal parties and family members - it’s just for the two of you.