The Last Word: Why I Want to Elope

So, it’s simple: I want to elope. At least, I think I want to elope. And this isn’t because I’m anti-marriage-as-an-institution-to-promote-the-status- quo-in-America. I just think that, all in all, I want to elope.

I don’t want the big wedding. I don’t want the formal ceremony. I don’t want the white dress and the stuffy tux, the haggling over bridesmaids and groomsmen, the appeasing of irrational soon-to-be in-laws, or the hosting of a ceremony that others think is right for me. I want to elope.

There is, after all, a spontaneous romanticism to eloping that a year spent agonizing over flowers, color schemes, dresses, and processional order doesn’t offer. “Let’s get married. Right now.” It’s riding the beautiful blaze of a comet on a starlit night versus attending a painstakingly planned dinner party with every fork in its right place. Like all things that are a matter of taste, I’ll take mine.

From what I can tell, a wedding with the pomp and circumstance that accompanies it can easily have the opposite effect of what it intends: the couple almost disappears in a fog of family demands, seating arrangements, alternative wishes, melodramatic friends, and irrational turmoil.

From the time you get engaged straight through the wedding, outside influences start to creep into your plan. And if you’re the groom, your opinions cease to matter. The focus becomes your future bride. What does she want? What has she dreamed of? What is the fantasy that started formulating in her mind way back when she was just a little girl and you were just a figment of her imagination?

What did her sister picture? Her mother? Her father?

In the year leading up to my best friend’s wedding three years ago, I watched as the bride’s mother injected herself into every facet of the planning. My friend and his fiancée were to be married on a lake near a nationally protected nature preserve, and everything culminated the final week before the wedding when the bride’s mother demanded that three barren trees across the lake – a quarter of a mile away in the background – be cut down so as not to distract from the overall aesthetic quality of the view. When it was explained to her that we could go to jail for eliminating the trees, her answer was a curt, “What’s your point?” The bride’s mother felt that the trees would distract people’s views of the service and would stand out in every photo taken of the scene.

Of course, it turned out not to matter. None of it. The trees survived, and no one cared or even noticed. Nothing could detract from why we were there. During the actual ceremony, I stood behind my best friend, the sun setting in the background over the lake, happy beyond belief for him.

I have another friend from college, a former housemate, who spent the months leading up to his wedding explaining to his parents that, despite their acrimonious divorce, he expected both to show up and behave maturely. Midway through the planning stages he called me on the phone. “We should just elope,” he said. “This has just turned into a nightmare.” He wasn’t inspired by the romance of running off and getting hitched – he just wanted to get away from the drama that had enveloped his wedding. Eventually, I flew out to Southern California to take part in the wedding, and I remember listening to the minister speak of the profound commitment these two people were making, reminding friends and family of our responsibility to their marriage, and subtly rebuking the parents who would come together lovingly the next morning at brunch in celebration of their son and new daughter-in-law.

And again, none of the previous theatrics had mattered. None of the fraught conversations that led up to that day and not the fact that only one of the groom’s parents actually attended the service. He was blissfully married. The fact that I was there, all smiles, to watch him get married meant the world to me.

Despite the myriad ways in which weddings can – and often do – go wrong, these are, despite my best instincts, stories that I guess I want, too. In truth, these are great stories, tales to be told and retold. I want these memories for myself. I also want my friends to be a part of it. How many times in your life do you get all of the most important people in the same place, at the same time, rallying (hopefully) in happiness and commemoration?

Yes, I still want to elope. But how do I leave out those who are important to me?

Maybe I’ll let us each pick four or five people, the special ones. Like family and a few friends.

And if my bride-to-be happens to have a large, close family and wants more people there than I do, then I’ll balance it out on my side. But I’m going to elope. Just me and my bride-to-be. And maybe my father and stepmother and mother and my sister and her husband. Just Bob and Leah and Matt and Marla and Tony and Mike and Heather. And maybe just a few others.

But that’s it. I swear. Because I want it all to be about us. Call it selfish, but I want that entire time, not just that single day, to be about me and her. What we want. How we want it. No drama.

Because I’ve always felt that the marriage ritual should be about one thing and one thing only: the couple. And maybe the friends who bear witness. And the family that supported us throughout our lives. But, dammit, I want to elope.