Is Eloping Cheaper than Having a Wedding?
Yay, you’re engaged and ready to embark on your wedding planning journey! One of the biggest first decisions you should make is how much money you’d like to spend on your wedding. The best wedding budgets are mostly firm, with a little wiggle room for fun personal touches or to spring for something you adore that a little more expensive.
As you set your wedding budget and begin planning, it can VERY QUICKLY get overwhelming. 2023 and early 2024 Ayla is nodding along with me. There are so many kinds of weddings you can have, and you’re bombarded by inspiration on social media. How are you supposed to know how much these weddings cost? How are you supposed to know what may be right for you two? You start to look at other options: elopements, micro-weddings, public land use. And you ask yourself a common question:
Is eloping (or choosing a micro wedding) cheaper than having a traditional wedding?
Short answer: it can be.
Long answer: it truly depends on your choices.
Here are the ways in which an elopement or micro wedding (and by that, I mean a wedding that is 30 guests or fewer) is guaranteed to be cheaper than a traditional wedding:
smaller guest count
Instead of 150 mouths to feed and bodies to accommodate, you’re only feeding and accommodating 35 or fewer. This means a MUCH smaller catering bill with better food. It also means a smaller and potentially cheaper wedding venue (big venues = big team to take care of them = big overhead).
Most of my couples choose to celebrate their micro weddings in restaurants or with catering to their micro wedding venue, or even to their AirBnB (double check the fine print on that one before you jump on it!).
Fewer vendors
A 150 guest traditional wedding requires a venue, planner/coordinator, photographer, videographer, florist, hair and makeup team, caterer, bartender, DJ, stationery and signage designer, and more. If you’re only having 20 folks celebrate your wedding day with you, you can choose which from this list is most important to you. You may not need signage or invitations. You may have a friend do your makeup. You probably won’t have a dance floor. You may choose a restaurant over a caterer. You may have your ceremony on public land, eliminating the need for a venue entirely.
If you’re eloping just the two of you, then the world really is your oyster. Most of my couples choose to have a photographer, pretty outfits, and some flowers for their vendors and spend the rest on their travel and lodging.
Fewer vendors mean a much narrower spread of your budget, and you can put more money into what’s important to you.
Less tradition
I find that my couples who choose to elope or have a micro wedding discard traditions that aren’t important to them, which ends up saving them some of that pomp and circumstance cost. Maybe you exchange private vows and have a party at your favorite restaurant in the evening. Maybe you choose a pretty and comfortable jumpsuit over a big wedding dress. Maybe you don’t have any guests at all!
Let’s get intentional
Whether your budget is $5,000 or $50,000, eloping helps you spend your wedding budget more deeply and intentionally. Think of it like this:
Dry chicken breast and broccolini for 100 mouths turns into artisanal passed apps and a wild caught salmon dinner with locally grown veggies for 25 mouths
$15k for a venue space and boring banquet chairs for 80 gets reinvested into destination travel and the wedding dress of your dreams
Fewer tables means you can upgrade your decor and double the florals
No dance floor means you can skip the DJ and add a super 8 wedding video instead
And, of course, if you're eloping just the two of you on a $13k budget, that means destination travel, a bougie hotel, and a honeymoon built in.
Starting to get the hang of it here? Let’s revisit that question. Is an elopement or micro wedding cheaper than a big wedding? It can be. Is an elopement or micro wedding a higher quality experience for you and your guests based on your wedding budget? ABSOLUTELY.