Adventure Elopement vs. Traditional Wedding
Curious to know the major differences between an adventure elopement and a traditional wedding? An adventure elopement is for couples who want to live their wedding day — not perform it. Think red rock trails, golden-hour hikes, Jeep rides, and champagne with a view. Compared to a traditional wedding, an adventure elopement is about movement, memory, and moments that unfold naturally.
Adventure Elopement
Modern-day adventure elopements are kind of what we do at Arizona Elopement Collective. We ditch the playbook when it comes to weddings and we help our couples curate an elopement that is truly authentic. If you want the full definition of a modern adventure elopement, you can check out this post. But we’ll give you the short version, an adventure elopement is an experience filled with unforgettable memories of the things that matter most.
Who It’s For
Not feeling the vibe of a cookie-cutter banquet hall wedding? If you want something more authentic because you can’t handle boring, then an adventure elopement is probably for you. That’s because you don’t really care what everyone else is doing or saying, and you especially don’t care about what is trending on TikTok when it comes to weddings. You think outside the box and you want to keep it that way when it comes to the beginning of your marriage.
An adventure elopement is also exactly what it sounds like, an outdoor experience that involves nature while reciting your wedding vows. Adventure can mean simply stepping out into a gorgeous vista with your closest friends to celebrate or could be off-roading or sunset chasing. If thats something you can get behind, then an adventure elopement is where it’s at.
Don’t want all eyes on you during your wedding day? We get that. You want a wedding day experience that feels intimate because that’s just how you roll. You want to feel comfortable on your wedding day and the thought of a traditional wedding with a grand entrance and 200 guests is not it.
Are you planning your second wedding, because the first one didn’t exactly turn out how you wanted it to? You’ve been there, done that, and know better the second time around. This time, you want to skip the trappings of the wedding day playbook and focus on your person. You want to celebrate your story and make your wedding day part of the crazy-fun life adventure you’re already experiencing together.
An adventure elopement is for couples who value experiences, not things. If what you want out of your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, that you can look back on for years to come, with vibrant life-giving photos to prove it, then an adventure elopement is for you.
The Spend on an Adventure Elopement
Not interested in spending $38,000 on a traditional wedding in Arizona? Which is the average. Everyone expects to spend on their wedding, but not by those standards. You know a wedding is a bit of a luxury, but you want to decide where to spend. With an adventure elopement, you get to define what is most important to you and spend where it matters most in order to drive your experience. The point is, you get to choose.
Our Sedona adventure elopements are fully planned experiences — photography, location scouting, logistics, and coordination all handled by our team. You just show up, breathe, and live the day you actually want.
Obligations
Want to skip the headache of planning a wedding for the next two years? Traditional wedding planning happens over an 18 to 24-month period. If you can’t fathom the idea of spending two years of your life planning a big party, then you can elope with either your closest friends and family or just the two of you! Our favorite couples are the ones who book us 3-6 months out. Our record of planning and executing a personalized elopement is actually 48 hours. When there’s a will, there’s a way.
As an added bonus to the long timeline of planning a traditional wedding, you also get the stress of added opinions. What your family thinks, what your wedding party thinks, what your friends think, and on and on. Isn’t your wedding supposed to be a unique day that focuses on your love? How does picking out color swatches and table linens with 15 opinions swirling around your head factor into that? An adventure elopement tosses out all the obligations of a traditional wedding, no linens required.
While a traditional wedding focuses on schedule and seating, an adventure elopement prioritizes freedom. It’s not about skipping the celebration — it’s about redefining it. You trade timelines for sunsets, and ballrooms for wild views.
An adventure elopement
- Is an adventure-filled outdoor wedding
- Focuses on your love story & relationship
- Doesn’t require two years of wedding planning
- Skips the headaches of obligations & opinions
- Forgoes constrained rigid timeliness
- Doesn’t involve spending money unnecessarily
- Filled with the people you actually want to celebrate with
- Is an authentic elopement experience
Traditional Wedding
We’re willing to bet you’ve been to a traditional wedding. If so, you know the drill. Ceremony, followed by cocktail hour, followed by a reception of dinner & dancing. As a guest, you might’ve been over it while you were waiting an eternity for the food to come out and during long drawn-out speeches. That’s basically the gist of a traditional wedding.
Who It’s For
A traditional wedding is probably for you if your parents are paying. Let us just say, that if your parents have decided to help pay for your wedding, sometimes this leads to you being tied to their obligations. Your wedding day will now be about the specific expectations they have and what they desire out of your wedding. Not only that, but you’re ok with it because you really want to make your parents happy.
A traditional wedding might also be for you if you are deeply religious and can’t picture getting married anywhere but your house of worship. That is something an adventure elopement will never provide unless nature is your altar.
Are you getting married for the very first time? You might want a traditional wedding because that’s “how it’s done”. Even though, you have no idea how strange it can feel to be the subject of a large-scale wedding . Also, just as an FYI, most couples on their second marriage tend to elope with us because their first traditional wedding turned out to be utterly traumatic.
The Spend on a Traditional Wedding
The average wedding in Arizona costs $38,000. But, because that’s just the average, you will probably end up spending a whole lot more. That extra spend? It will be on things you weren’t even aware of. Like a cake-cutting fee (per guest), a fire safety fee at your venue, and signature cocktails that nobody drank.
Obligations
Aside from being obligated to your parents because they are paying, you are now tasked with planning a wedding with a fixed date & rigid timelines. That means tracking down venue after venue until you find “the one”, signing heaps of contracts, and being left with a strict wedding day timeline that ends when your venue says it does.
Aside from the rigidity of your timelines & contracts, you feel obliged to invite every single friend, family member, and acquaintance that your parents have made a detailed list of. And those guests? They’ll feel just as obligated to attend. The night of your wedding will be spent hopping from table to table greeting guests, with your spouse table hopping in the opposite direction, making sure everyone is having a “good time”.
All of those guests that felt obliged to attend because “it’s your wedding”. Any idea how excited they actually are? Couples tend to be a bit more guarded at a traditional wedding because they are so concerned with whether or not their guests are having a good time. Now take that guarded feeling and put it in front of a camera. Photos of a couple on their wedding day when they are stressed out and guarded? Not so great.
Traditional Wedding
- Takes place in a religious institution
- Typically paid for by parents
- Requires two years of wedding planning
- Is a staged production
- Filled with guests you were forced to invite
- Photos reflect an inauthentic experience
- Happens around the couple, not for them
- Fulfills parental obligations
Want to say no to tradition and say YES to something that actually feels like YOU?
All The Info
You now know the difference between an adventure elopement & a traditional wedding. Now, the best part, you decide what your adventure elopement will look like. We started Arizona Elopement Collective because we wanted to give couples a chance to rewrite the rule book when it came to their wedding day. Will it be an adventure elopement with a big party at a later date? Or will it be just the two of you?
Curious to know more about what the modern definition of adventure elopement means? You can find our hot takes along with answers to your undying questions, in this article.
