Weddingbee boards

My FI and I were planning a big formal wedding for August. After being completely miserable from planning (and family dramz) we decided to cancel it all and elope to Paris at the end of April. We just booked the flights tonight and we even decided to spend a couple of days in Rome! I am SO excited and happy with this decision! Since our wedding in Paris will be symbolic (you can't legally get married there, lots of rules) we are having a "legal" ceremony here that our parents and grandparents will be invited to. 

For anyone else considering this I found a reasonably priced english speaking photographer. Here is her site. Any other questions about eloping to Paris I would be happy to answer too!

Any other bees eloping to unique places? (BTW doing it this way cut our wedding expeditures in half!!)

@MrsTCB:  No I had not seen her post. Thanks for that! I'll have to ask where she got the vehicle! 

Thanks everyone! I am very excited! I was going for a romantic and intimate wedding from the begining and I'm glad I get it now!

@Mrs McCain 2012:  there's a garden behind Notre Dame that we are using for the ceremony. My dress is from the Vera Wang White collection and I think he's just going to wear a black suit/black tie. 

@bellaharo:  Honestly, planning this has been very easy and stress free. I saw the idea to elope to Paris on Intimate Weddings. I just looked through what vendors the couples on there used and googled them! There's also several wedding coordinator services to use that will book everything. If you do it yourself it's a lot cheaper. I started out talking to Stephen Zezza and he was helpful at first and then he just stopped e-mailing me out of nowhere. I also got a price quote from One and Only Paris, they were cheaper than SZ, but I wanted to keep looking. i finally just googled "english speaking photographers" and stumbled upon Juliane (she is half the cost of SZ). She's been very helpful in giving me recommendations (ceremony locations, photo ops, driving service, restaurants, etc). Also, the ceremony is stricly symbolic so you do not have to hire a celebrant to officiate. I asked Juliane if she has any english speaking friends to do it and we're going to pay them $50-$100 to do it and write everything ourselves.

I'm still not quite decided about the chauffer for the day but i will likely be going with Paris Authentic. We also haven't fully decided on where we're eating in the evening, we want something private, but i found out Lapérouse has private rooms so I'm going to look more into it. 

I put the links in there so you can have some resources if you decide to do this option! I say if you want to go for it!!

How exciting !! Congratulations dear ! I'm so glad that you could get away from all the drama and just be happy that you are getting married !! I went to Paris in November, its so awesomely romantic :) 

@andilovesjosh:  I agree about One and Only. I would contact Juliane she has been AWESOME. She e-mailed me some beautiful photos of possible ceremony sites and I was sold. She's even been sending me restaurant ideas and today she sent me some chaffeur ideas. She suggested this company and they have vinatage cars which is what I was really hoping for. At this point, I only have good things to say about Juliane. She only charges 500€ for 2 hours and then 250€ for each additional hour for elopements (bigger weddings she charges more for). 

Photo credit Juliane Berry Photography

When I get more ideas I will certainly post what vendors I'm using. I would love to help in any way I can. I'm considering starting an elopement website featuring weddings and vendor contacts. 

@andilovesjosh:  I'm doing my own hair and makeup so I wasn't really worrying about that part. I don't think in France they do updos the same as we think of here. If you booked Juliane I'm sure she would have some recommendations though. For flowers, it sounds like many brides who do this just go to the local florist. I made my bouquet out of silk flowers so I can use it in Paris and for the civil ceremony. 

I liked Juliane for the same reasons. Honestly I think it is possible to do it all yourself. I wasn't impressed with the coordinators either and I heard they are quite expensive. I also didn't feel like I needed someone else to plan this since it's just the two of us. 

I will do a recap when we get back for sure!