The Eloping

When we decided to elope, it wasn’t because we can’t stand our friends and family.

Quite the contrary. We like them all very much. We felt the best thing we could do to show them just how much we like them would be to spare them a massive wedding extravaganza to celebrate our love for each other. Who needs that crap anyway? Certainly not anyone in our lives!

OK. Maybe that isn’t quite true, either.

We eloped because when we sat down earlier this year to talk about getting married, we didn’t want any of the traditional hoopla and nonsense that seems to create a headache for even the smallest of affairs. Invitations still need to be picked out, filled out and shipped out. Menus still need to be picked out, tried out and sent out. Don’t even get Scott started on how much flowers cost because they cost a lot and when he learned that his face sorta turned a bright shade of magenta.

When it got down to it, we weren’t interested in celebrating our decision to marry each other in such a fashion and, if a wedding is really a celebration of the commitment we’re making to each other, why put ourselves through all of that? It didn’t take much hand-wringing for us to decide that the best way to demonstrate our love and commitment to each other would be to go off, just the two of us, and tie the knot. Take the focus off of place cards and favors and DJs and cake tastings and squarely on The Business of Marriage.

In the six months it’s been since we started planning in earnest, there hasn’t been a single moment of regret.

On October 23, we leave for Vermont. On October 25, we’re getting married in the one-room, clapboard chapel on the grounds of the Sugarbush Dairy Farm by Chuck Gunderson. Chuck owns the General Store in town. He was one of many officiants suggested to us by the dairy farm, but he won out because he earned the best results in a Google search.

We are nothing if not practical.

Other than Chuck and our photographer, no one else will be present. And while we know we have the love and support of our families and friends, we also know they all wish they could be there with us. Plus, you combine the fact that neither Erin nor Scott Lives Off The Grid for any discernable amount of time, and the B&B has free wi-fi, they had to create this blog to document their adventure together, this the first of many they plan to share as married folk.

We have no particular plan for this blog or its contents, and we can’t guarantee updates with any huge regularity since we don’t want to remain that connected to the online world, but we hope it serves as a little glimpse into out big weekend, and a way to share the experience in some way with each of you.

Thanks for joining us on our weekend!