I’ve seen a lot of content out there surrounding what you should wear on your wedding day. Titles like What Fashionable Wedding Attire to Buy in 2023 and Top 10 Strapless Wedding Dresses for Under $1,000 are all too common in the wedding industry. So when I was given the challenge to write a blog post about what people should wear to their elopement I knew that I needed to come at it from a different angle.

Much of the fashion that you see from elopements on Instagram and Pinterest is very similar to that of the traditional wedding industry, with one notable exception: Shoes. If —attending a big, traditional wedding— you see someone wearing 6-inch stilettos, or someone else wearing leather soled monk strap shoes you wouldn’t think twice. However, if you tried to wear either of those to most elopement locations you would either end up injured or very disappointed in your completely ruined expensive shoes.

So, if you can’t wear traditional “dressy” shoes to your elopement, what should you wear?

Just like everything else about your elopement day the possibilities are almost endless, but for the sake of providing a little bit of solid information I’ll provide some examples.

When my wife and I eloped in April of 2022 we wore Timberland Boots. We were having a few friends and family members attend our service and needed the location to be accessible to everyone (including my then 95 year old grandmother) so we didn’t have to hike very far up a mountain. Because of our lack of hiking we were able to pick a shoe that leaned toward fashionable. We did, however, still need to be able to walk on muddy trails and on the beach so we needed something that would have tread, be waterproof, and be able to hide our thick wool socks since it was still April in the PNW.

If you choose to hike further into the wilderness for your elopement then your shoe choice will be relatively defined for you. You will need some form of hiking boots. My current favorites (from a fashion standpoint, not a comfort standpoint since I’ve never tried them on) are the brown leather Danner boots with red laces. Something about the color of those boots contrasts so nicely with the formal wedding wear that people often wear to their elopement.

What if you want to show a little bit of your inner punk skater kid at your elopement? If you’re not hiking very far and you don’t have to deal with other elements you could wear something like Vans or Converse. Remember that this day is about doing what you want to do and it goes all the way to everything that you put on in the morning. If part of reclaiming your wedding day is putting on your favorite beat up pair of Chuck Taylors, then I’m here to be your biggest supporter in doing that.

The last shoe type that I want to cover is the activity specific shoe. Sometimes, the activities that you want to do on your elopement day will determine what you wear on your feet out of necessity. Want to go skiing? You will need to wear ski boots.

Want to go on a hike but there’s two feet of snow? Snowshoes.

The moral of the story is that the options are only limited by your imagination, just like your wedding day. You can choose to make your wedding as formal or informal as you want it to be, and you can do the same with what you put on your feet.