Make a Memory with Me: the simple beauty of eloping

I’d never been one of those people who visualised their wedding day in advance. I had no strong feelings about dresses, flowers or music. But with my love, or obsession, with travel, I thought that if I did end up married it would likely take place on a beach. I assumed that the person I was marrying would love to travel as much as I did, and hopefully be up for the idea. Luckily, he was. 

Admittedly, in the vagueness of those pictures in my imagination, I thought that the beach would be somewhere warm – cyan skies, zingy teal water. What I hadn’t anticipated was that our choice would actually end up being a wild, windswept sweep of sand in Scotland. 

Our elopement wedding was the result of my husband Jon and I looking for an intimate, low-key and inexpensive way to commit to each other before we celebrated in a bigger, more traditional way with friends a week later. In England, you’re not legally allowed to marry without a structure over your head, so instead we decided to drive some eight to Scotland, where we could have a humanist ceremony with just our photographers as witnesses. What our “venue” lacked in a roof it made up for with scenery. We decided on a barely known beach in Dumfries and Galloway, a nod to nearby Gretna Green, where people have eloped for centuries, but without being in Gretna itself. 

The plan was simple in that there wasn’t really one: nothing more than turn up at low tide and head to the pub after. We wanted to keep it inexpensive and put the budget towards a great photographer, knowing that these pictures would matter to us for decades to come. 

Capturing our dream wedding

Ahead of time, we had a quick chat with our photographers, a lovely husband-and-wife team who suggested joining us for the prep stages of the elopement at our Airbnb. From there, they drove behind us to a flower shop. I had called the florist a few days before and asked if she could make me a “large messy bouquet of greenery”. She took my vague brief and created something even better – a beautiful bouquet of ferns with a coral pop of colour, all for about £20 (I still have the dried bouquets in a vase on our drinks cabinet at home). We then headed to the town hall to collect our paperwork and drove on to the beach that our incredible humanist celebrant, Lindsay, had suggested. 

We found a wet patch of sand on the edge of the water, wind whipping up my sequin dress, tangling my hair, our eyes squinting in the unexpected dazzling sunlight of that October day. The sand was the colour of treacle, the stones steely grey, the sea a shade of mocha. 

We read our vows that we had written to each other, making promises of unconditional love through highs and lows. Lindsay had suggested handfasting, an ancient ritual in which your hands are bound together with a length of fabric, symbolising your union (it originated the phrase “tying the knot”). We also shared a dram of whisky – symbolising the unity and trust in the years ahead. 

We gave no direction to our photographers, figuring they were the experts, trusting them to capture something that felt romantic, joyful and intimate all at once. They stood some distance away, and when they moved closer at certain points, we didn’t notice. 

I knew that I’d be happy with the dozens of beach pictures they’d captured, but after the ceremony, they were keen to take us to a few different settings. We signed the official papers leaning on the boot of their car, with them acting as witnesses, before trying a few different locations. I’m really glad we did: some of my favourite shots are of us sitting on a wall in this small Scottish village (one we returned to years later, pitching up overnight in a campervan), standing in woodland together with huge grins, and later leaning with our backs against a lighthouse –because who can resist a lighthouse? After we said goodbye, we drove to a local pub on the sea edge, me taking a rare selfie as Jon drove, before amateur pictures of pints and pies.

Why I chose Popsa 

Afterwards, creating a Popsa Photo Book felt like the perfect way for our elopement wedding to have longevity, in a beautiful book that could live life on our coffee table, and wouldn’t get stuffed into a box in the attic, inevitably ruined by our leaky roof. 

I opted for a clean, understated Photo Book format that let the Scottish light and landscape do the talking. With Popsa, uploading the images took minutes. From there, I curated rather than crammed: full-bleed coastline shots balanced with smaller, intimate details – our hands bound in fabric, the coral in my bouquet, muddy boots by the pub fire. I arranged it chronologically, from quiet morning preparations to windswept vows and pints at dusk, giving the story a natural rhythm. Seeing it in print gave the day a different scale and permanence – less fleeting moment, more enduring chapter.

Making the magic last

I often – all too often, really – feel huge guilt that I have so many special life memories trapped in my phone or in the Cloud. Not only does this stop me from seeing and reappreciating the big and little moments in my life, but it also means that when I do come to look back on them, I’m doing so by spending even more time peering at my phone –something I’m really trying to become more mindful of. 

And while my husband and I both hold memories of the day in our heads, the nature of where they’ve been stored (on our computers and phones) means we’ve never really enjoyed them back together. In fact, we’d never seen these pictures anywhere other than on a screen. With work, house moves and kids, those years since our wedding day have passed at lightning speed. We love looking back at a day when life together was just beginning.

Creating a Photo Book (albeit almost seven years after our elopement) actually feels like a huge weight has been lifted; printing the pictures has always felt like such an overwhelming task that I’ve spent almost a decade procrastinating on it. To have such an easy upload process and a beautiful, tactile result has really freed me of something that was unfortunately feeling like a burden, and has encouraged me to do this with so many more life moments. I have a feeling it could become quite addictive.