I'll be frank, my family is a mess. My mom has untreated mental health issues, liked to be a asshole to us as kids and as of now, my brother won't speak to her. She and my biological dad are divorced and have been for a long time, and still believes that they're gonna get back together despite both of them being married.

Stepmom can be civil to my mom, mom can't. Stepdad hates me, and keeps trying to convince me that I'm his "spiritual child" and biologically his. Tests say otherwise. Dad hates my stepdad because he treats us like garbage, but can be civil. Everytime that these people have been in a same room it's been chaos and nothing but drama. My fiancee family is similar, and is very religious (he is not) unlike my family. As you can see this will be a messy affair, and with all the restrictions, there isn't a better time to elope and not waste lots of money for people to fight at a nice event!

With all this shit going on, we just looked at each other and were like "let's elope". So we've got a day picked out, and we're gonna head down to the courthouse relatively soon. By ourselves. Needless to say my dad is upset, but understanding, as is my stepmom behind our reasoning. My mom and stepdad are furious, and basically said we could have a wedding but disinvite the other parents or have two weddings. I told them it was their misbehavior that was the final straw, and I wasn't going to pay for them to fight at a nice place on my dime. My fiance told me I could've just lied and given another reason, but I am fed up with them.

My parents are upset because I'm depriving them of the wonderful experience of wedding stuff, like the dress visits and cake eating and stuff like that. My reasoning is I'm not gonna drop thousands of dollars to have them fight and cause a scene at something I don't even really want. My fiancee doesn't care because now in the future when everything opens back up we can have a banging honeymoon. He is kinda upset about the lack of pictures, but we can buy a dress and take some pictures with the both of us.

Edit: sorry, I wrote this when I was really tired/frustrated this morning. I ended up taking a nap and saw my mistakes, lol. I'm female, he is male.