The dismal rise of the modern elopement

I didn’t realise how attached I was to the traditional British wedding — the whole messy, pricey, drunken business — until I discovered it was under threat. The new fashion is for elopement, just the happy couple, one or two friends and a photographer, all perched on the edge of some picturesque cliff or on a mountain top. It makes sense while we’re all social distancing, but I suspect the elopement trend is set to continue — and I think it’s dismal.

I first saw the signs when I asked a friend what he was up to this Saturday. ‘Oh, I’m just off to an elopement,’ he said. My immediate instinct was that he should call the police. I grew up reading Georgette Heyer — all child brides bundled into carriages at night by elderly earls — so for me there’s a fine line between elopement and abduction.

But 21st-century elopement, as it turns out, doesn’t mean running away, or dashing to Gretna Green — it’s essentially just a wedding free from extended family in some glamorous location. It was here before the virus hit — the internet is full of ‘celebrities you didn’t know eloped’: Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, Cameron Diaz and a chap called Benji, Tom Brady and Gisele. But like Zoom meetings and electric scooters, it’s been boosted by the pandemic. Corona has given elopement wings. I think it would be a good idea to clip them a little.

Once you start looking you’ll find that almost every romantic venue which once laid on weddings now offers an ‘elopement package’: flowers, registrar, photographer and complimentary prosecco in the bridal suite. Almost everyone advertises the experience as ‘free’ and ‘wild’. Be young, be bohemian, get hitched on the beach; throw off the crusty shackles of tradition; throw off boring uncle Bill and to the dogs with cousin Jane.