Illinois boasts its unique blend of urban sophistication and natural beauty, with Chicago at the heart of it all. The Windy City offers a remarkable backdrop for your special event, with its iconic skyline, stunning lakefront, and diverse neighborhoods. If you’re considering eloping in Illinois or searching for the perfect place to elope in Chicago, we’ve got you covered!
Illinois, anchored by the dynamic cityscape of Chicago, offers an enchanting canvas for unforgettable elopements. The Windy City, renowned for its iconic skyline and picturesque lakefront, provides a romantic setting that transcends time. Imagine exchanging vows against the backdrop of architectural marvels and strolling along the charming neighborhoods, where each corner tells a unique story. The accessibility of the city ensures that everyone can partake in the magic, with wheelchair-friendly options available. Embrace the seasons – from the colorful foliage of fall to the snowy charm of winter – and plan your wardrobe accordingly for a seamless celebration amid the city’s timeless beauty.
Illinois beckons with its blend of urban sophistication and natural grandeur, inviting couples to experience the magic of their union in a place where every moment feels like a work of art. Whether you envision an intimate ceremony against the city lights or a lakeside affair with the skyline as your witness, Chicago has it all. The city’s diverse neighborhoods offer a variety of settings, ensuring that your elopement is as unique as your love story. From accessible Illinois wedding venues to considerate weather planning, Chicago stands as a welcoming destination for couples seeking an extraordinary celebration. Check out some of the most popular venues offering all-inclusive elopement packages in Illinois:
Chicago Botanic Garden – Perfect for nature lovers seeking a blend of the city’s energy and greenery.
Starved Rock State Park – Ideal for couples looking for a picturesque, nature-filled elopement ceremony.
The Armour House at Lake Forest Academy – A romantic, classic location full of timeless elegance.
Destination Highlights
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Elopements completed
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Why Eloping in Illinois is Awesome
Unveil the allure of Chicago as the ultimate elopement destination. Its unique charm is evident in:
Iconic Skyline: Exchange vows with the city’s iconic skyline as your witness, creating a breathtaking and memorable setting.
Cultural Richness: Immerse yourselves in a city that seamlessly blends art, history, and modernity, providing a captivating backdrop for your love story.
Diverse Neighborhoods: Explore the richness of Chicago’s neighborhoods, each offering a unique atmosphere and ambiance, ensuring a personalized and memorable elopement experience.
Find Your Perfect Illinois Package
We’re firm believers that there’s magic within each and every wedding that takes place.
SeedStarting Price
You, your SO, and someone to make it official. For couples all about the essentials, the Seed package sets you up for a simply perfect day.
The Sprout package offers a professional officiant, one hour of photography, your Personal Elopement Planner and access to our best-in-class tech platform. Your stress-free elopement starts here!
Why should big weddings have all the fun? If your dream elopement includes an exotic photo sesh, a first-look video, and a dedicated glam team, Oasis is your destination.
Illinois may be known for the Windy City, but that doesn’t mean it has any shortage of iconic elopement spots. From downtown Chicago to surrounding parks, we love our outdoor wedding venues! To elope in Illinois, you choose your date, venue and package and we’ll do the rest! Read further on for more tips on how to elope in this great state.
While Illinois offers various places to elope around the state, we concentrate our services in the Chicago area. Whether you’re seeking a private venue for a private ceremony, or a gorgeous park surrounded by the city skyline, we offer a variety of different options for your perfect Illinois elopement.
To locate your ideal venue for your big day, use our venue finder.
An Illinois elopement can be incredibly affordable. Since Chicago is centrally located and considered a hub for many airlines, there are always good deals on flights. Simply Eloped’s packages range in price pending the services you’re seeking. Be it just a simple civil ceremony with an officiant, or the whole suite for a luxurious small wedding reception, we’ve got you covered!
When thinking about your Illinois elopement, envision what your day looks like. Do you see yourself with a lush bouquet, an elopement photographer capturing each perfect moment, and an officiant who delivers an authentic, intimate ceremony? Or perhaps you’ve dreamt of a bridal look done by a professional hair and makeup artist, along with a videographer who can capture every moment for your family and friends not present: the right vendors are crucial when it comes to bringing your dream to life. At Simply Eloped, we vet every vendor to ensure they match our values, quality and are just flat out wonderful humans. You can ensure every person on the Simply Eloped team is the best of the best!
You can be sure about one thing when it comes to Illinois – the winters are bone chilling! These midwest winters are not for the faint of heart so we highly recommend you stray away from ceremonies October – March here. However, once the flowers start springing, the Illinois spring, summer and fall are enviable. Anytime April – September will be an absolutely delightful time in temperature for your big day.
The time of day you choose for your Illinois elopement can make a world of difference. Much like a valley between two mountains, the skyscrapers of the city can block sunlight earlier than you would anticipate! We’re big fans of early morning or late evening ceremonies for your Illinois elopement.
How do I make my Illinois elopement legal?
To get your marriage license in Illinois, you both need your IDs (state issued or passports are great) and official copies of your divorce decree, if either of you were previously married. The great news about Illinois is that there is just a one day waiting period after receiving a license before you can get married. Marriage license fee in Cook County is $60.
If you’re coming from another country – the same rules apply to you, nothing additional is required to marry. You do not need a marriage license from your country. Your passport is acceptable for identification.
No – Illinois does not require any witness for your big day so that’s one less thing to worry about for your elopement!
We define an elopement as a wedding ceremony with 20 guests or less. Elopements are usually an intimate, high quality, generally outdoors ceremony that is personalized to the couple (as opposed to a traditional cookie-cutter wedding ceremony).
You never know the magical moments that can take place when you're eloping!
We think there are 1000 reasons you should elope, but here are a few of our favorites:
1. We don't believe a wedding has to be stressful. There is far less to coordinate (and we take on most of that wedding planning anyhow), and your realm of responsibility consists of making a few decisions and getting your marriage license. It's hard to beat a wedding that is actually...wait for it...relaxing!
2. Cost-conscious: Let's be honest, there is so much uncertainty right now! Economic recession? Inflation? Rising cost of living? Save your money for a honeymoon or buying a house and still have an intimate wedding ceremony you'll remember for the rest of your lives.
3. A Ceremony should be About YOU and YOUR LOVE:
When did a wedding turn into a party for everyone else? We personalize every aspect of your experience – from the vendors to the vows. We'll even cry real tears with you. We're here to celebrate the core of what makes a wedding ceremony special: you making a lifetime commitment to the one you love. That's a big deal – and we treat it as such.
An elopement package is a bundle of services designed to help couples tie the knot conveniently with one price tag. Elopement packages offer the very basics (like an officiant and venue), but couples can add in a variety of other services, such as an elopement photographer, a musician or flowers.
Simply Eloped has been in business for almost 8 years, and we've married over 13,000 couples. With the combination of our amazing team, nationally renowned wedding vendors, and our innovative technology, we've streamlined the process of planning high-quality, personalized, and cost-conscious ceremonies. We're honored and excited to work with couples to create the most magical day of their lives! Here are a few more reasons why you should choose us:
We've been doing this longer than any elopement company out there— 8 years!
We've performed more ceremonies than any other company—over 13,000 ceremonies.
We personalize every ceremony we do—we don't believe in cookie-cutter weddings.
We vet every team member and vendor to ensure they embody our values and maintain our quality standards.
We're passionate about weddings, and our enthusiasm shines through in everything we do.
We've spent 8 years building our technology, which enables us to do what we love—just better!
Our wedding packages include 20 guests or fewer, but every venue we offer varies in how many guests we're allowed to invite. Just ask us!
We make the process of getting married extremely easy!
We'll work with you to establish your destination, venue, date, time, guest count, and the package you'd like to book with us. Then the rest is on our plate! We offer 250 venues around the US, and in most instances, we coordinate on your behalf.
We'll pair you with exceptional vendors, an elopement planner who will guide you through every step of the process, and set you up with a dashboard where you can manage your elopement day from A to Z.
Your biggest responsibility is getting your marriage license, and we'll handle the rest!
Of course! We have all sorts of packages that can offer whatever vendor you're seeking to hire for. We do not, however, just coordinate a venue. You do need to book a package for the rest of the perks of working with Simply Eloped.
Oh my goodness this is such a personal question and one you and your honey must answer together. We highly encourage you to have a deep heart-to-heart about what you each envision for your big day and discuss what's realistic AND exciting to you both. If you ever need additional guidance, our CEO donates half-hour increments to help you ensure you're asking the right questions. You can learn more about that program by clicking here.
Do you mean to ask how stress-free? Generally, elopements are considered a stressless way of getting married.
Since 82% of the ceremonies we perform are destination weddings, the average planning time is 3-9 months in advance of the ceremony date. However, we've planned as far as three years out and with as little notice as a few days. We're flexible, it's one of our biggest strengths as a company!
A huge reason why we designate our ceremonies as twenty guests or less is because we definitely want your clan to be in attendance (should you desire them to be). But once you have more than 20 people, you really start needing infrastructure. Larger groups begin to require things like chairs, ample parking, multiple bathrooms, etc. At that point, you really need a venue that can support larger groups, which is where the cost really begins to add up. Not to mention, it requires more and more vendors to manage larger groups.
While an elopement costs $1,000 to $5,000, the average cost of a traditional wedding in the US is $35,000. That's a big difference! We highly encourage you to ascertain what's the best route for you!
Yes! At Simply Eloped we offer over 250 venues (private venues, national, city and state parks, etc) around the nation! While there are some venues that prefer to work directly with couples, we coordinate any that we are able. Just ask!
That hugely depends on the date, time of year, or budget you have in mind. Simply Eloped is here to help you find the best place to say “I Do”!
You can use our venue finder to help you determine the best fit for you!
Absolutely! Whether or not your venue is in a destination we offer, we can definitely do our best to provide vendors or a team based on the services and experiences you're after.
When you're using our quote request process, a lot of the venue fees are grouped into the final package offering. That's why you may be unable to see a line item or specific breakdown of how much the venue costs. If the venue requires you to make the reservation, we let you know in our quote builder how much that costs and how to do that. Everything else is included in the package quote. Just one less thing for you to worry about.
If you cancel services with us your deposit is nonrefundable. The reason for this is the moment you book our services, we get to work! Your Customer Experience Rep will start the wedding planning process; we'll introduce you to your vendors and team; we even get started on coordinating with a venue or a permit. Because of this, there is a lot of time and often upfront costs that we front as soon as you book with us. When you cancel your booking with us, that doesn't change the time or money we invested to begin the planning process for your wedding day. Thank you for understanding! If you need to postpone, change your venue/date/time, your deposit remains as your placeholder. There are no penalties or fees to change details for your elopement. Our deposits range from only $250 to $450.
Simply Eloped is by far the most flexible wedding company in the nation! Because we are set up in over thirty destinations in the US, not only can we postpone your big day at any time, but we can also easily move from one destination to another! There are no fees or consequences to postponing with us? we understand sometimes life just happens!
Yes! When we save your invoice you have the opportunity to pay in installment payments at 0% APR, and in any amount you like. Just ask us!
We are not fans of hidden fees, and we do our best to be as transparent as possible. If you have more than 20 guests or desire additional services, there may be added fees. However, we are always communicative about them and give you the opportunity to work with us!
For some services like our hair & makeup, if you happen to be staying at a hotel or Airbnb outside of our area, there may be fees to get our hair & makeup artist to where you are. You just never know how far away things are in some areas until you are in the planning stages!
There are a lot of variables to consider with whatever type of ceremony you're planning.
82% of the ceremonies we perform are destination, meaning couples don't live in the area they're choosing to get eloped. Therefore, additional costs like airfare, hotel, eating out, and activities are all line items that should be considered in your budget.
No two ceremonies are the same, so be sure to understand all of the costs associated with performing your ceremony prior to booking with any company!
Yes? every state requires you to get a marriage license IN the state you are holding your ceremony. So if you live in Michigan, and are getting married in Hawaii, you'll need to get a license in Hawaii. You will then submit the license to the state of Hawaii and they will mail you a marriage certificate which will then translate to a certificate in the state you live in. If you are holding a symbolic ceremony, you can get a license in your state, but if you intend for your ceremony to be legal you'll need to abide by state guidelines to get your marriage license in the state you are holding your ceremony.
All Simply Eloped packages include 20 guests or less. The reason for this is because when you have more than 20 guests, you end up needing more infrastructure, planning and teamwork from my vendors. While we do have some venues that can support larger groups, we do charge extra for any guests above 20. Short answer? Yes you may, it just increases your cost.
Absolutely! We have a wide variety of vendors in each destination and can definitely work with you to find someone you're excited about. We don't confirm prior to your booking but once you confirm your date, your Customer Experience Rep will be in touch and can guide you through the process of expressing your preference.
For lighting, we recommend holding your elopement ceremony in the morning or in the evening. Direct lighting can create harsh lines or shadows and isn?t very flattering on anyone. We definitely recommend holding your ceremony prior to 11am or after 4pm. Feel free to ask us for timing based on your date and destination!
Due to our nationwide setup, we do not provide custom flowers. If you choose to book a wedding package with us that includes flowers or add-on florals to your custom package, we offer a variety of selections for your florals:
1. Flowers by Palette
We have arrangements based on a color palette, which means the types of flowers may not be exactly as pictured, but the colors and arrangement style will match. You can explore our options for Flowers by Palette here (excluding Hawaii).
2. Hawaiian Arrangements
Hawaii is a unique destination, and we have our stunning tropical arrangements for ceremonies taking place in Hawaii. You can view these arrangements here. Please note that these arrangements are only available in Hawaii.
While no company can legally obtain your marriage license on your behalf, we are very familiar with state guidelines and simplify the process for you by walking you through all of the steps, documentation and information you?ll need to acquire your marriage license. We?re also always here for any questions you may have at any time!
Every state has different guidelines for whether or not you need a legal wedding officiant or any witnesses. When you book our services, we'll send you a guide that walks you through these details on a state-by-state basis. However, *most* states do require an officiant who is registered in the state and a witness or two (which cannot be yourselves or your wedding officiant; but can definitely be your photographer!).
As soon as you book our services, we get to work!
We'll immediately introduce you to your Personal Elopement Planner, who is kind of like your best friend between the date you book and the day you elope! Your Pep will be ensuring every step of the process is smooth and delightful. They will introduce you to your team, answer any questions you have, put your schedule and invoice together, and much more!
We'll also begin the process of personalizing. You'll work with your officiant to ensure your ceremony matches what you envision and dream of. Your photographer will ensure they understand the kind of shots or photos you're hoping for. Your hair & makeup artist will inquire about the style you're going for with your hair and makeup. Your dashboard is also customized to meet your needs.
We offer many tools to help you feel at ease about your decision to book Simply Eloped, including your personalized Elopement Checklist, your marriage license guide, your Wedding Page, and more! You can even make installment payments on your invoice at 0% APR. Weeks prior to your ceremony, we'll send your itinerary with all the details you and your guests need. Your team will meet at your ceremony site, and the rest, as they say, is history.
First off, know that every moment of your elopement day, we are available to you for whatever you need! We're very prompt on timing with floral delivery, hair & makeup, etc.
Your team will always meet at your venue prior to your ceremony time to ensure everyone is collected, introduced, and ready for a gorgeous ceremony right on time. Your officiant will kick off your ceremony and ensure that all of your requests are beautifully exhibited in your personalized ceremony. It's important to note that your dedicated Personal Elopement Planner will not be present at the ceremony, but will definitely be accessible by phone or text for your day-of needs.
Ceremonies generally last 15-20 minutes, which will then kick off into your portrait session with your photographer (if you booked one with us). The main task you need to be mindful of on your wedding day is bringing your marriage license, and we do the rest! 🌼👰🤵
The right answer to this is, whatever you envision! We've seen it all: casual, themed, color Uncoordinated. We think your attire is a great way for you to personalize and make the ceremony your own. (But for inspiration here's a video of some of our favorite and most unique elopement styles we've seen our couples exhibit:
Many of the venues we perform ceremonies at do not have a traditional aisle, but we can definitely create a faux aisle or use the natural settings as a path for you to approach your honey! You?re welcome to have anyone you please walk you down the aisle ? including yourself. We want you to do whatever you feel is right for you!
Absolutely! Just be sure to check with us about what kind of florals (or not) your flower girl can spread at the venue.
Oh we sure do love a first look moment ? they can be so romantic! Be sure to coordinate with us directly if you?re interested in having this moment as it does change the timing of your day. We?ll have to work with your team to ensure everyone is on the same page about the incorporation of that moment.
It's a fair question. When you're bringing people together for an event, there is a chance things can go, not exactly according to plan. We've experienced undesirable weather, popped tires on a vehicle, a global pandemic? we've seen it all! One of the strongest reasons to book Simply Eloped is because we are PROS at adapting and being flexible. We have an armada of backup vendors, a slew of backup venues and we have a contingency plan for whatever comes our way. It goes without saying that we'll be there for you on your big day, no matter what turns our twists happen.
We wish we could control the weather, but alas, there are some things quite simply out of our realm of power.
In our experience, most weather passes quickly, and we can be flexible about timing. However, we do have recommendations or options for indoor venues, and if worst comes to worst, we can move your ceremony to another day. We'll work with you individually in the case of poor weather.
Pro tip: Though weather can be daunting or scary, some of our FAVORITE ceremonies happen in thunder, rain, or snow storms. Being open-minded about undesirable weather can create an extremely memorable ceremony. Sometimes it's all about perspective.
