When you’re planning your elopement, it’s completely natural to be wrapped up in the day itself. You’re choosing your location, thinking about your vows, deciding what you’ll wear and imagining what it will feel like when you finally stand together and say, “I do.”

But your elopement is really only the beginning.

The marriage milestones that start with an elopement come afterwards: your first anniversary, five years, ten years and, hopefully, one day, fifty. And somewhere between all those big numbers are hundreds of smaller moments that become part of the life you build together.

You can start some of these traditions before and on your elopement day and carry them with you throughout your marriage. Here are a few ideas we absolutely love –

Write a Letter To Each Other Before You Elope

Before your elopement, each of you secretly writes a letter to the other. Tell your beloved how you feel right now, what you’re excited about, why you chose them, why you chose to elope and what you imagine your lives might look like one year from now.

Seal and date the letters and don’t read them.

On your first anniversary, open them together and meet the two people you were before you eloped. There’s a chance there’ll be things you’d forgotten writing, things that’ll make you laugh and sentences that hit completely differently after your first year as husband and wife.

Then write another letter that day!

Tell each other about the year you’ve just had, what you’ve loved, what adventures you’ve been on, what surprised you and what you’re hoping for next year. Seal those letters and don’t open them until your second anniversary.

Keep doing it and, over the years, you’ll create something money simply can’t buy: a collection of love letters that tells the story of your marriage as you were actually living it. Imagine opening that box after 10, 25 or 50 years together.

We can’t think of many anniversary gifts better than that.

Make an Elopement Time Capsule

While you’re in Jim Thorpe for your elopement, start collecting little pieces of the experience.

Keep a copy of your vows, a pick up map of Jim Thorpe, hold on to your train ticket, keep receipts from the restaurants where you ate or the cocktail bars you visited, the admission ticket from a local museum or a selection of postcards you picked up in one of the shops.

You could also press a flower or a few petals from your bouquet, save the champagne cork, pick up a fallen leaf or keep a tiny stone from somewhere you visited during your elopement.

None of it needs to be valuable and that’s rather the point.

Put everything into a keepsake box when you get home and open it on your first anniversary. Spend an evening going through it together, then add something from that anniversary in it before sealing it again for another year (such as receipts again)

Before long, your elopement time capsule becomes a marriage time capsule, getting a little fuller every time you open it.

Choose One Photograph and Recreate It Every Year (guarantees a giggle!)

This one can get REALLY good with age!

When you receive your stunning photographs from Jim Thorpe Elopements, choose one favorite that totally sums the two of you up perfectly. Not necessarily the most romantic or beautifully posed photograph either. Pick the one that captures both your personalities.

Then recreate it every anniversary.

Do the same pose, same expressions, and bring the same ridiculous energy.

The location can change (take it wherever you are on your anniversary). Your clothes will definitely change. Hairstyles will come and go, and a few questionable fashion choices will inevitably make an appearance. As the years pass, you might even find the photograph expanding to include children, beloved pets or other wonderfully unexpected additions to the frame.

That’s what makes it brilliant.

After 25, you’ll have something extraordinary: the same two personalities staring back at you while almost everything around them changes.

Come Back to Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe doesn’t have to be somewhere you visit once and then only see again in your photographs.

Make coming back part of your marriage.

Book the same hotel you stayed in for your elopement (or try somewhere new each time), reserve a table at the restaurant where you celebrated afterwards and spend a weekend retracing a few of your steps. Walk through town, revisit your favourite places and, if possible, return to where you exchanged your vows.

You don’t need to recreate every minute of the day. Leave room for new favourite places and new traditions too.

There’s something truly special about returning five or ten years later to the place where you eloped and realizing that while the streets may look familiar, the two people walking them have a whole lot more history together.

Get Your Elopement Album Out

We love digital photographs, but there’s something completely different about having your elopement story in your hands.

There’s a reason our Olympian Collection is by far our most popular collection. Not only does it include a beautiful album filled with photographs from your elopement, but it also includes a fabulous (and highly addictive to watch, we might add) Highlight Reel, bringing the movement, voices, laughter and little moments from the day back to life too.

They’re the things that help you remember everything!

Make getting them out part of your anniversary. Pour yourselves something lovely, watch your Highlight Reel and sit together and go through your album from beginning to end.

You’ll notice different things as the years pass. A photograph that wasn’t initially your favorite might suddenly mean much more. You’ll spot tiny details you’d forgotten, remember conversations and find yourselves laughing about something that happened just before or after a photograph was taken.

That’s what we love about having something physical to return to. No notifications are popping up, no scrolling and no favorite photograph disappearing amongst thousands of others on your phone.

And years from now, when the details of the day aren’t quite as sharp as they once were, you’ll have the photographs you can hold and the Highlight Reel you can watch that take you straight back to where it all began!

Your Elopement Is Where Your Love Story Starts

Your elopement is one day, but the whole point of it is what comes next.

The anniversaries, the ordinary Tuesdays, the adventures yet to come, the difficult bits you’ll work through together. And the inside jokes that’ll get funnier with age. The places you return to and all the different versions of yourselves you’ll meet along the way.

These are only a few ideas to get you started. Take the traditions you love, ignore the ones that aren’t remotely you and invent some completely ridiculous ones of your own.

If you’re still in the planning stage, our blog about Elopement Ceremony Rituals is full of ideas for adding something meaningful to your ceremony itself. And if part of what’s holding you back is worrying about how you can actually go about eloping- that’s what we’re here for. Take a look at all the Hidden Support we offer our couples.

And when your elopement day finally arrives, remember that the photographs, vows, little keepsakes and places you’re choosing now aren’t only part of that one day.

They might just become part of how you celebrate your marriage for decades to come.