Do we tell people it’s an “elopement” or “wedding”?
Basically the title. I want to give it a title that best sets expectations for friends and family and gives me less of a headache as a result.
We’re planing to get married in a park and go to dinner after with eight of our closest family and friends. It’s a destination wedding/elopement since everyone lives far apart. We’re skipping a lot of traditional things (rehearsal dinner, wedding cake, dance floor, etc).
I expect whatever we choose to call it will conjure images/expectations based on the most recent weddings in our families. The only recent wedding on my fiancé’s side was an expensive and pretty traditional 200+ person wedding at a vineyard. The only recent wedding on my side was that my mom did the classic courthouse elopement and didn’t tell us for months. Obviously, neither of those are close to our plans and I don’t know how to make that clear when we call it a “wedding” or “elopement”.
I like “elopement” since it immediately tells people not to expect a lot of traditional things (which I feel like is fair to give a heads-up about since they’ll have to travel and take time off work). I think it also makes it self-explanatory to people we are not inviting why they weren’t invited. But calling it a wedding is just easier because it’s more common so by default our families will treat it with the same level of seriousness as any other wedding. I don’t want people flaking/showing up late or bringing uninvited +1s, pets, etc, because they don’t think of it as a “wedding”.