Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Raley.
Hi Elizabeth, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In 2010, I met the former owner of Elope to Savannah and he was working as the main officiant for the elopement weddings and planning everything. He told me before I photographed the first one – “Once you do this, you’ll never shoot another big wedding again! You’ll be hooked!” He was mostly right, I have shot a couple of large weddings since then, but regretted doing so! He was right that I would be hooked. Fast forward to 2013 and he moved away rather suddenly. Over the years I’d become the main and only photographer. We had many future elopements on the books and he basically gifted the business to me, for which I am forever grateful.
Since then, I’ve changed the packages, the rules, locations….done so many things to make this business work like a finely tuned machine. My husband and I are the full-time staff and beyond that we have about 8 contractors that are officiants, photographers, social media and email assistance, and a graphic and web designer. It has taken YEARS to get to this point and our work hopefully reflects all of our attention to detail.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
In the beginning, I had to struggle to find more officiants and photographers to help me out. It’s hard to find good, reliable people. Some people I hired actually stole my business model and ran off with that! Though, I’m not worried about them in the slightest. We’ve had to hire attorneys to draft contracts to keep our clients from trying to circumvent some of our policies and rules and also now have a trademark on the business name so that it is also protected.
One person I hired to optimize our google ads did the exact opposite and that was a struggle. More recently though, Covid-19 provided some shaky times but in the end, turned out to be our second biggest year in sales on the books. We have a good solid team now and I hope to keep it that way.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a photographer by trade and finally found my niche interest in elopement photography in 2010. I love taking photos of people and while I do love weddings, I do NOT love the fuss, stress, chaos, and most of all wedding receptions that come along with a traditional, huge wedding. The perfect balance of this is an elopement! Ideally, our clients are the couple alone running off to be married in secret! We do allow for 5 guests, however, we’ve found that sometimes even just one person can change the dynamic and ultra romance of just being alone and intimate with your partner. My company is the original elopement business in Savannah and was going before I was part of it. Personally, I have been part in either the planning or photography (or both) of over 3000 elopements.
Our motto is “Just show up, we take care of the rest!”
The main goal is for couples to have a truly intimate wedding celebration that’s just about them. Larger weddings get bogged down in pleasing the crowd and not the actual people that matter. We realize that our style of wedding isn’t for everyone and we encourage people to do what is best for them, however, we do find a market in people who are being pressured into larger affairs that they really don’t want for the sake of family, tradition, or obligation. Or people who are naturally more private, reserved, introverted or shy and do not wish to be the center of attention at a huge gathering.
More recently, we’ve become more popular than ever since having larger gatherings is not often safe due to the pandemic.
Many of our younger couples are realizing that money is better to spend on a house, car, starting a family, or student loans….or better yet, an extravagant honeymoon. Our older couples are often on their 2nd+ marriage and learned the first time around that all the fuss and expense is just not worth it!
I am proud to say that the courthouse has told us a couple of times that we perform more weddings in this county than any other entity.
In short, we specialize in romantic weddings that are focused on the couple and are as stress-free as humanly possible with no drama. It makes me smile from ear to ear when I hear someone say that we have achieved that.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Obviously, owning your own business and using it as your sole form of income – especially when your spouse is involved and neither of you have any other jobs other than the business – is a HUGE risk. No one to fall back on if things get slow or fall a little bit. We often get asked if this is a side gig or just something we do for fun and the answer is NO. We live, breathe, and sleep our clients and their weddings. We are constantly “on” and on-call. If we need a break, we have an amazing person that can answer our emails for us and take the wheel for a while and some amazing officiants and photographers to help out.
Contact Info:
- Email: elopetosavannah@gmail.com
- Website: www.elopetosavannah.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/elopetosavannah
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/elopetosavannah
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/elopetosavannah
Image Credits:
Elizabeth Raley
