It’s called eloping. This means you’re getting married suddenly… secretively.
Reasons for running away to get married include being prevented from marrying due to age, skin color, or parental non-consent. Eloping also entails running away to a state where blood tests are not required.
One reason that couples cite for their desire to elope is to get married in private, minus the hoopla of an extravagant wedding. When they realize that people other than themselves are calling the shots for their future wedding, they decide to escape to save themselves.
Planning to Run Away to Get Married?
Planning to run away to get married is similar to planning a regular wedding, except this time you’re doing it incognito. If you decide that eloping is the best solution, some planning is required. We generally don’t recommend it because it’s always good to share something special with at least a few friends and family.
The first step is to clearly establish that running away to get married is a mutual decision, and that no one is forcing it on the other. We can’t emphasize this enough. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your current better half is itching to get married secretly because they want to escape a previous marriage or a criminal conviction.
The decision to elope is not made on a whim. It’s not like saying, “Hey, let’s drive 1000 miles today and see where that takes us.” This is not a temporary adventure or a fling; eloping is an event you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. If you don’t know your better half well enough—background, ambitions, schooling, career, credit history—eloping can turn into a very messy undertaking.
Second, eloping does not mean you have to exclude your special friends. You can still elope with only a handful of people you choose and have a simple ceremony at city hall. In some parts of the US and Canada, eloping is possible if you can produce a marriage license and two witnesses.
The third step is to set a budget and choose a place to get married. Find out if the state or province you want to marry in requires blood tests or has a waiting period. As you know, blood tests are required in a few areas to make sure that neither of you is suffering from a venereal disease. The county clerk will inform you if these tests are required.
You will also need an officiant. The officiant should be able to issue the marriage license as well.
Talk has it that Las Vegas is a popular destination for eloping couples. So is Arizona. Some couples have even eloped to Europe. Be careful about getting married on foreign soil. The marriage license, if obtained in another country, may not be recognized or accepted by your own country. Check this detail carefully.
A story in a celebrity gossip magazine shared that British TV stars Ashley Jensen and Terence Beesley were wed in secret in the forest of Big Sur, California. They decided to elope because they didn’t want to worry about napkins. On hand assisting the couple was the family dog, who also served as the ring-bearer. The minister supposedly took care of all other arrangements—a marriage in a jiffy, by the looks of it.
Does Eloping Run in Families?
We have no scientific proof to say yes, but you sometimes wonder. We don’t want to make it sound like eloping is an incurable disease, but if you think about it, we all like to run away once in a while. Our parents may have done it as well. After all, eloping is defined in two ways: one—to run away from one’s spouse with a lover, or to run away to get married in secret; two—to slip away or escape.
Rebecca T. Godwin’s story has nothing to do with running away to get married. She just ran away to go to the dance with her boyfriend. She was fifteen at the time, and her father had nailed her windows shut to prevent her escape. He was angry because she went to the circus with her friends instead of staying home to do schoolwork, so he grounded her by nailing her windows shut. Somehow, she managed to pry open the windows, jumped out, and headed for the dance. On her way there, a strong downpour soaked her. She couldn’t show up looking like she had just gotten out of the pool, so she returned home. Unable to get back in through the window, she rang the doorbell. Her father came to the door and gave her a tongue-lashing.
This story might seem ordinary, but there’s some irony. Fifty years later, Rebecca had to nail the windows of her father’s bedroom in the care facility because he had a record for escaping, and the staff were at their wit’s end trying to keep him in.
Going back to the question of whether eloping runs in families—well, if you have enough stories similar to Rebecca’s to create an anthology, you might say that elopement does run in families. If you did some running away when you were younger, and then decades later struggled to keep your parent from escaping their healthcare facility, it’s like going full circle. Believe it or not, there’s such a thing as the National Institute for Elopement Prevention and Resolution, which was established in 2001 and is based in Topeka, Kansas. Their mission? To help family members understand the psychology of elopement and why patients escape from healthcare facilities.
Essentially, therefore, elopement can mean more than just running away to get married. In fact, if there’s a need to establish an institute like the one in Kansas, it probably indicates that eloping from one’s caregivers takes on more significance than eloping to get married.
Not that we’re suggesting you plan on running away twice in your life: the first time to get married (stage 1), and the second time to escape from a healthcare institution in your golden years (stage 2).
We stumbled upon a book called The Elopement Everything Book: Avoid the Wedding Chaos (2004), written by Shelly Hagen. It talks about how to avoid the hassles and time-consuming logistics of planning a big, organized event. It shows couples how to say NO to an extravaganza their parents want to stage. Couples who don’t want to spend large sums of money just for a wedding may find this book helpful. It provides tips on passports and marriage licenses, budget planning, breaking the news to friends and family, throwing a small party when they return, and settling into married life. And where can you get a copy? We saw it on Amazon.com. Do read the customer reviews first.
