Oh the nerves of eloping! If you have done it yourself, I am sure you can recall the excitement and nausea-triggering nerves associated with keeping it all a secret. You can likely also recall the moments where a little part of you missed certain things about a traditional wedding day.

“Do you regret eloping?” is a question that popped up a lot in conversation when people would ask about our wedding. I chose to sit and think hard about my answer to ensure it truly reflected my heart, and I am now sharing it with you!

There were things I wish had been a bit different about our wedding, but there is nothing I regret about our wedding day.

Why did we elope? Put simply, Anthony did not want to be the centre of attention and I did not want to invite guests for a wedding were some of my key family members were not present. Despite the excitement of picking a venue and tasting a menu, deep down neither of us felt truly happy about certain aspects of what was to be our happiest day. When we took a step back and considered our options, we realized that eloping gave us the opportunity to have the wedding be about us two.

My wedding day was one of the most peaceful days I have lived in my twenty-eight years of life. My heart had gotten used to living in anxiety so peace was not an emotion I frequented. While getting ready on my wedding day I remember thinking “this is how incredibly good God is to me, that He would show me true peace on what should be a nerve recking day”. Part of me questioned this peace- why wasn’t I freaking out about the schedule? did I miss something? why wasn’t I crying about missing my family? So much had been difficult around our engagement and wedding that I almost wanted to believe I did not deserve the happiest wedding day; I had braced myself for the heartache of not having the support we wanted, so why was there no heartache? I had several hours to think about all this while getting ready, and all that surrounded my mind was peace. The most beautiful and heavenly peace my heart has felt to date. I believe that had we gone through with our planned Toronto wedding, I would have experienced very different emotions on our wedding day that would have tainted beauty with pain.

Eloping allowed Anthony and I to have a day filled with the most genuine happiness and love; it allowed my planner-brain freedom to not stick to a schedule; it gave us a reason (within our control) as to why family was not present. Did I stress out at some one point? Yes, once when the wind threw our deliciously packed lunches to the ground, but our amazing photographer just picked it up, dusted it off, and moved on to the next part of our day (and I doubt he even recalls this happening! It was the only moment of stress and it was removed from our day). But that was it. From waking up and going for breakfast with our pastors, to driving through the mountains for our epic pictures, I honestly do not think the day could have been more heaven filled.

So there ya have it. I regret absolutely nothing about eloping with my love!
If you would like to see some clips, click on the link below and be amazed by our photographers!

Clips: “A Banff Elopement”