Why We Chose to Elope

Weddings are this phenomenon where it’s easy to drop an entire home down payment on one day. It is its very own culture. And if that’s what you want in no way am I speaking ill against it. It is an event you plan for and want for since you were a little girl. I don’t think I’ve ever been that little girl. I wasn’t really brought up to dream of a wedding that someone completes you type situation. I saw a severely broken marriage, and there was no romancing that at all. With all that being said, sometimes, some people make you want things that you never wanted until you met them. On the best of days Tanner and I are cheap, frugal, if you want to phrase it nicer, often taking the do-it-yourself approach. We didn’t have any money when we first got together. It was a constant state of cutting back, saving, and sacrificing to try and provide the best life we could for the goblins and give them the experiences of “normal” if you will, make up for the beginning and what they lacked. We truthfully were just starting to recover when we decided to purchase our home together and enter into a mortgage. Tanner proposed on a night in June. No ring, no fancy dinner. It was just a night. He made snacks and we were designing our home; it was simple but so perfect. We didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t want to be bombarded with questions we didn’t know the answers to or have everyone else’s opinions. It was completely selfish but brought so much inner peace. After our start to the year, it was needed. People became very hard to relate to after the fire. Because even after your trauma, everyone’s lives continue, they go back to their venting texts and it’s hard to even explain the mental place you are in. Not even your underwear belong to you, as you’re living in a hotel room. Normal Jess doesn’t discredit anyone’s feelings. This version of Jess just pulled away further and further. It was just the four of us. It IS just the four of us. When it came time to talking about the wedding; hopes, dreams, wants, needs. I realized the last thing I wanted was to be on display for a bunch of strangers. For me to get so nervous and have everybody watch me trip on my own foot and eat shit. Right off the bat a big wedding was eliminated. That, and it just wasn’t affordable. A big misconception we have learned around our situation is everyone thinks you just stop paying your mortgage. If you do this, the bank takes back your giant hole in the ground and you’ll own nothing. You are required to pay your mortgage still, while replacing your items on your paycheque as insurance for your contents are slower than the second coming of Christ. We decided a small intimate wedding. But we were at the if you invite ‘y’ you have to invite ‘x’. And then the obligatory you must invite these relatives. Suddenly we were in this situation of everyone else and what they would want. With people we truly didn’t want there. And because its stressful to the point of tears. What the eff is the point of us getting married if it was for everyone else? So, we said fuck it. We decided to get married at the giant hole in the ground the only thing we owned. We bought that property for a reason and at some point, we were going to have to turn the narrative around. We decided to breathe new life into home which wasn’t an easy feat. The only thing that truly mattered to us was the photographer. We wanted nice photos of our wedding day, something we would be proud to hang on the walls. Which turned out to be the easiest part of it all the photographer was local with a dark twisty edgy style who also had an officiant in mind. We were very fortunate. Our bouquets, the alter everything was a do-it-yourself craft. Right down to my wedding dress that came in the wrong colour. As devastated as I was Landon and Tanner headed outside with a can of spray paint and fixed the problem. I am dead serious; my wedding dress was spray painted from the bust down! We live our life against the grain and our wedding/elopement was no different. It was the four of us trying to make memories that weren’t us fleeing our home. The thing is no matter what you choose to do in life someone is going to have something to say. The older I get the less I care, at the end of the day, it’s my family that matters, Tanner and the goblins. I got married in a black dress, it was a prom dress I paid less the 200$ for it. My engagement ring, that Tanner had already ordered but decided to not wait for, is a stone in the shape of a coffin. It's anything but ordinary. The day was perfect, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it. This was my fairytale to live…and I lived every minute of it…. Now the one downside to eloping, you are living your happy bliss when people find out and everyone seems to have something to say. It’s interesting because at our age, we were all raised on the golden rule, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Honestly with the prices of everything the way they are going….normalize eloping, normalize small, normalize supporting others in their choices. Whatever their choices might look like.