When people visit WhereToElope.com for the very first time, they often wonder how we got to know so much about eloping, or more importantly why do we care? What prompted this path to become an elopement expert? We have made it our mission to help couples plan the perfect elopement and many people wonder why we have dedicated so much time to create a comprehensive resource for couples. The answer is that it all began with the site’s owner/operator Dave Westfall’s own small wedding.
Dave got married at 19 when attending college. While it wasn’t really considered an “elopement” per se at the time, based on today’s definition that is exactly what it was. Large churches had turned us away when they were approached about conducting a “small wedding”. But being young and in love Dave didn’t want to wait. So, the circumstances led them to take a nontraditional route. Luckily, Dave was working as an orderly in a hospital to pay his way through college at the time and they were able to secure use of the small intimate wedding chapel in the Mayo Clinic hospital located in Rochester, Minnesota.
Dave went on to become the meeting planner for RE/MAX and oversaw more than 100 events at various locations. So, it was a “natural” that in 1994, Dave took on the role of wedding planner for his Daughter’s small outdoor wedding at the Gallup Gardens in Denver. When Dave remarried, it again seemed only natural to have another small wedding with a handfasting and unity candle ceremony performed by his second wife’s cousin in the basement of Dave’s Denver Tech Center condo.
In short, Dave has experienced having and planning a small wedding and has first-hand knowledge of the challenges that come hand in hand with eloping. In 2011, while consulting with the Innkeepers and Tourism industry in Northern California Dave gained a renewed interest in the need for small weddings and elopements and in the process became an elopement expert. Since then he has dedicated much of his free time to creating WhereToElope.com in a bid to help couples who, like him, just want to get married without the hassle and expense!