Celebrating Love: Reasons Queer Couples Should Elope

Pride month: a time to honor love, celebrate progress, and acknowledge the work we still have to do. Here at Simply Eloped, our goal is to make sure everyone has the elopement ceremony of their dreams, period. Since our founding days, one of our core beliefs has been to make sure each and every one of our couples feels loved, supported and celebrated during their elopement journey. So in celebration of Pride, we want to take time to celebrate queer love and the stories of our LGBTQIA+ couples.

Why should LBGTQIA couples elope? 

Tying the knot looks different for everyone, as it should. Some want a grand wedding ceremony, others an intimate celebration, with or without friends and family. You and your partner should have the wedding of your dreams – whatever that looks like to you. At Simply Eloped we are, of course, partial to an intimate elopement. Elopements provide an environment for queer couples where they feel safe and comfortable.

Rethink “Tradition”

Traditional weddings come with a heavy blueprint for how your day should unfold, but please take this as your permission slip to take what resonates from that blueprint and leave the rest behind. Elopements all you to fully customize your big day, so you can have the parts of a wedding you’ve always dreamed of without the baggage, drama, and stress. Committing to a day that’s just about you two and your love is really what it’s all about, after all. 

Creativity Stays at the Center

Since elopements are already considered ‘non traditional,’ they are the perfect place to be creative, unique, and completely you. Want to wear capes on top of a mountain and recite your favorite quote from Lord of the Rings while you exchange wedding bands? They are the *two* rings that rule them all, go for it. Maybe you’ve always dreamed of jumping immediately in the ocean with your partner after being declared wife and wife. Sounds perfect to us. Customize your day so it looks and feels like you and your love story. That’s really what eloping is all about.

Spend Less but More Meaningfully

Elopements are inherently less expensive than a traditional wedding. So, if you’ve always wanted to exchange vows but also really want to do a month-long bike tour around Europe – you can do both. By deciding to elope, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Celebrating Queer Love

We’ve had the privilege of being a part of thousands of queer love stories. In celebration of their love, and of pride month, we’re so grateful to showcase these love stories with words from the couples themselves.

Katie and Darci

Katie and Darci had a beautiful, intimate elopement at Kealakekua Bay, also known as Captains Cook Bay.

“We matched on hinge and set up a pool day date, however the Florida weather had other plans. A hurricane was coming and I was required to work a flight to and from Florida and told Darci we would have to reschedule. She was impatient and wanted to meet asap even if it was just for 20 minutes. When I got home from flying late at night she came over and we ended up talking for hours. A year later, Darci set up a photo shoot proposal. I thought I had planned the photo shoot because I found the photographer on Facebook and worked with her to coordinate it but little did I know, Darci was in contact with her all along. Then she blindfolded me and took me to brunch at an Airbnb that had all of our friends in Tennessee and even our friends and family from Florida and Colorado that flew in for the occasion. Best day ever!”

Joshua and Cody

Joshua and Cody exchanged vows at Bethesda Arcade in Manhattan on a sunny day in March.

“We met in Nashville Tennessee at a bar called play dance bar through mutual friends. We have been inseparable ever since from living hours apart from each other about 6 months after I moved to Louisville, KY to be with him and start our lives together. We’ve been through a lot together and are coming up on 10 years in May. We have put this off for so long with all of our friends and family pressure to tie the knot. It’s just been overwhelming so that led us to making this decision to not involve anyone but us.”

Megan and Hailey

Megan and Hailey rang in newly-wed life in front of friends and family at Makena Cove in Maui, Hawaii.

“We met at a Lesbian Cornhole League in May of 2023. It was honestly love at first sight for us both. During the league we became friends, but after the league was over we had to see each other again. We went on one date that lasted 8 hours and the rest is history. Our love is the definition of “when you know, you just know.” We got engaged in May of 2024 in San Diego, CA and knew we didn’t want a long engagement. We can’t wait to say I do and start our life together as a married couple.”

Shane and Jordan

Shane and Jordan had their special day in one of New York’s most iconic places, Grand Central Station, just before heading back home to New Zealand after a whirlwind seven week adventure.

“We met in January 2010. Shane had spent a week training for a new job in a “foreign” big city. I’d gone out with a friend to celebrate the new job, but we were separated and Jordon was the night in shining armour who ensured I made it home safe. After exchanging names and pleasantries, Jordon decided at that moment he could never call Shane “Shane” as that was his brother’s name….too weird. So the nickname Vegas was born from referring to a colloquial term for my home town (Rotovegas). The name has stuck, and I’m considered Uncle Vegas to our nieces and nephews and most friends now. We spent the first year of our relationship long distance, before Vegas moved to Auckland (Jordon’s City) where we set up home for the better part of 10 years. Recently we decided that it was time to move back to Rotovegas to be closer to family and have been able to purchase our own home. Our engagement/proposal was very informal, and almost by accident without much fanfare. We love to travel and between us we’ve pretty much covered the globe. Thanks to Covid, all travel has been put aside for the past 3 years, so we decided to let loose this year and are doing a 7 week self drive trip around Europe ending with a week in New York. We were always the kind of people who would say “OMG why spend all that money on a wedding, when you could do it at the courthouse and have a kick-ass honeymoon”. So here we are doing exactly that just with the honeymoon first, and having our ceremony the day before we fly back to New Zealand.“

LGBTQ Friendly Elopement Packages

Simply Eloped offers a number of customizable elopement packages for your LGBTQ elopement! Each package is customizable, giving each couple the unique opportunity to build their perfect, unique, and stress free elopement package from top to bottom. Here are a few details on each package. To see more information on each of these elopement packages, click here. 

• Seed Package Details: Includes professional officiant, personalized ceremony, advice on obtaining your marriage license and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.
• Simply Photographed Details: Covers one hour of professional photography, a gallery of 75 or more edited images delivered 15 days or less after your ceremony and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.
• Sprout Package Details: Offers a professional officiant, personalized ceremony, one hour of photography, a gallery of 75 or more edited images delivered 15 days or less after your ceremony and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.
• Bloom Package Details: Includes a professional officiant, personalized ceremony, one hour of photography, a gallery of 75 or more edited images delivered 15 days or less after your ceremony, matching nosegay bouquet & boutonniere, and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.
• Oasis Package Details: Covers professional officiant, two hours of photography, one hour of videography which renders a highlight reel and long form video of your ceremony, hair and make up for one person, a gallery of 75 or more edited images delivered 15 days or less after your ceremony, matching nosegay bouquet and boutonniere and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.
• Wildflower Package Details: Our most customizable package. Includes a professional officiant, four hours of photography, coordinated transportation, customizable floral arrangements and a dedicated Elopement Specialist.

It’s our honor to plan elopements that make our couples feel special and seen. Whether that means mountain side in Colorado, walking down the aisle to a jazz band in New Orleans, or exchanging rings during sunset on the beach in Maui – we’ve got you.  If you and your partner are seeking a way to reclaim your love story and celebrate your union in a way that feels authentic and stress-free, contact one of our Elopement Specialists and start planning your dream elopement celebration. 

Written by Lisa Guglielmo

Lisa is the Marketing Manager at Simply Eloped. Having gotten married in 2022, she experienced the good (and not so good,) of traditional wedding planning. Here, she loves watching couples do their weddings their way.