Any advice? pitfalls?
It's rapidly becoming the option the lady and I will pursue, since both of our families are fucking nuts and we want to do this on neutral ground away from both of their influence. Right now we're trying to figure out a few things, namely:

1. Where to go. Preferably on the eastern seaboard, since in the end I will want my dad to be there and because of health issues he won't be able to fly too far or be too far from a hospital just in case. Mexico is out. It's looking like Savannah and Memphis are the frontrunners, but never having been to Memphis, it seems kinda heard to plan an impromptu wedding there.

2. Who to invite. We're obviously not planning on more than a handful of people going 800 miles away from wher they initially planned, but still, do we extend it past closest friends and immediate family?

3. When to do it. I say fuck it, as soon as possible. The whole point of eloping is spending the smallest amount of time worrying about crap like this.

So yeah, any suggestions? perils? How hard is it to drag a JOP out in Savannah? I'm assuming that Memphis is a bit easier to find a place to get married.

Yes.

We decided on a Thursday and were married on the next Saturday.

We picked a romantic spot. I called a few ministers. Got all the paperwork. The minister met us at the romantic spot, and it happened pretty quick. Random pedestrians stopped to be our audience who gave us their applause. We didn't invite anyone. It was a complete secret.

Our romantic spot was the Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier in Chicago. Fortunately it was being set up for a much larger wedding, so there were caterers around, and flowers and the space was pretty quiet.

Dollywood has a $35 drive thru wedding. Gatlinburg, TN.

I married at City Hall and had only my parents there as witnesses. Had a more proper wedding about a year later.

One of my girlfriends has 22 half & real siblings and her husband has seven. This isn't even counting spouses and their kids. They decided to elope and had a wedding at a local church with only their parents and her twin. The day after the wedding, they flew to Hawaii (we thought it was a vacation) and she sent out cards that read, "We're married!" They never had a reception or anything.

Make sure that you don't offend anyone by eloping. I know, I know, it's your day and all that, but if you have a mother who would cry for years because she didn't see her baby boy get married, consider letting her in on the plan. You could always set a limit at immediate family (parents, siblings, grandparents) and like two close friends apiece.

Also, if you're going out of state to marry, make sure you know their rules on who can get married in the county. That would suck if you got to Memphis and found that you have to live there or something in order to get married.

Illinois = no blood tests + no witnesses

We also had a proper marriage a year later in a Catholic Church for all our friends and family. Our eloping was more as a technicality so she wouldn't become an illegal alien.

Timmy Green Card.

also, i guess it technically isn't dollywood, it's just across the street in Pigeon Forge, TN.

4 minutes. Done.

http://www.drivethruidos.com/

It took us 2 and a half years of pending paperwork to get her green card even after we were married. The only reason she was even approved for one was because we were married.

Since she hadn't gone back to school on her student visa, she was technically in violation of her status which means she had 90 days to get out of the country at which time she would have become an illegal alien. If this had happened she would not have been allowed to return for a number of years. If she had left in that 90 days, she wouldn't have been able to return without a fiancee visa, which would take a year to get, then when she came over we would have had something like 90 days to have the ceremony. I'm not sure what would have happened if we got married in Sweden. The kicker that we didn't know about was that once she filed for the permanent residency, she was not allowed to leave the country because that results in a change of status or passport status or something. There is an "advanced parole" document that you have to apply for which permits the applicant to travel while their paperwork is pending. There is also a temporary work papers that she got which she was entitled to while her paperwork was pending. It costs us thousands of dollars in paperwork. Ah good times.

Chicks are so expensive, even when they try not to be.

Good thing they're so much better looking than dudes.

So while i was looking for that drive-thru link, i saw this site for cotton, and i laughed quietly on the inside.

http://www.letsrunoff.com/

Get help planning every last detail of your spontaneous, off the cuff nuptials.

my parents eloped and got married in reno, nevada, on their way home from a road trip to california. they had been together for about three months. called their parents from pay phones to let them know about it; 38 years later they're still together.

doesn't really help you, but it's a cool story.

Doesn't this make you wonder how your parents made it work after three months of knowing each other, yet there are people who date for ten years and then divorce after two years of marriage? I wonder if people had less expectations back then.

That's a great story, fick.

Did you just compliment her parents for having mutually low standards?

I don't think so.

I just think that people expect too much of marriage these days. Marriage requires a lot of work and attention and it seems that a lot of people aren't willing to put forth the effort. I know I wasn't. So, maybe back in the day (40's through 70's), people worked at their marriages and stayed together through the good and bad and didn't give up quite so easily. (That's not to say that all of today's marriages are doomed. I know plenty of people who are happy and who will make it to see their 50th anniversary after a long healthy life together.)

Just face it. You got busted.

i'm one of those people, except in our case it was 5 1/2 yrs of dating & just under 2 of marriage.
and we got married at city hall in brooklyn - my parents, her parents, my grandparents, and 4 or 5 of our best friends came. that was it. then we went to a restaurant & got plastered. no muss, no fuss.

you hear this all the time. will someone explain it to me? i am married for 5+ years and i truly don't understand what it means. successful marriage is much more dependent on chosing the right spouse in my view.

i understand what she means. my parents, and their ability to stay together (and still completely in love) for that long, have taught me a whole lot about committment and not just giving up on people when the going gets rough. helpful lesson, that.

and the sex.

and the lack of children. And if you screw that one up, woops there goes the sex.

and the communication.

(But mostly the sex.)

(Phil, I think that kids running around just brings about a lull in the sex life that is eventually overcome with rest and/or alcohol.)

shut up.

Thrillhouse, you don't think that marriage requires work? What about all of the compromises that come with it? The joining of money and property and space and families. I don't mean that it requires work, like therapy or that it's a constant struggle, it just shouldn't be taken for granted that every day is going to be easy and problem-free, like a lot of people assume.

I'm mucking up Cotton's thread with talk of marriage shit. Sorry, dude.

word. I am sort of scared about marriage because it's so easy to plan my day because I can do whatever the hell I want whenever I want to do it.

i see. i circumvent a lot of that trouble by not making money or having property. the family stuff there's no way around and i could see how it could be trouble if you had different ideas about how to handle family obligations and so forth, but i really do think that if you pick the right person, it can be smooth sailing.

you definitely have to be committed yourself and you have to choose the right spouse. of course, this boils down to luck in the end because there's no way of making a well-informed decision. from what i have seen so far, if you put 2 people together in a marriage, they will wither jive or they won't, right from the word go.

I don't think you are supposed to plan to elope. Eloping is running away with your lover and having a secret wedding. So, just do it and have a great time and don't tell anyone and then when you get back have someone else throw a party for you -- that way, you don't have to do any planning, the ceremony is something solely between you and her which is what marriage is anyway, and let other people will pay for party and you still get gifts!

Amen.

jesus I should've just asked my mom.