Did you elope?
Yes, and it was awesome. No regrets whatsoever, and we've been married over 12 years now.
If yes, how was the fallout? Any family annoyed forever? Did you feel like you missed out on anything? Were people understanding?
Everyone but my mom (i.e the bride's mom) was fine with it. My husband's parents eloped themselves, so while I know they were also kind of bummed we did, they didn't say anything except that they understood. My mom, however, was another story. She claims to have cried the whole day. She's never been fond of my husband, though, and I was only 23 when we got married (hubby was 26), so I think she was also upset that we got married relatively young. Oh, and we had already started wedding planning (which gave me hives) so she was all excited about the idea of a big, traditional wedding, and I think she felt cheated out of that. My husband and I were nothing but stressed by the idea of a big wedding and all the family drama that would ensue, though, so I felt incredibly relieved when I realized eloping was an option. So, aside from my mom, everyone else was 100% fine with it. I definitely don't feel like we missed out on anything; I feel like we dodged a bullet!
One thing we did to appease our families was that we had a faux ceremony on the date we had originally planned on getting married. I wore a dress, had some flowers, etc. We had been planning an August wedding, but we eloped in April. Still, on that August date, we had a friend "marry us" and then we all went out to dinner afterwards. To an outsider, it probably seemed just like a nice, little outdoor wedding with maybe 20ish people present. All of that was really for everyone else, though. To me, it felt like a silly show, but the parents seemed to like it (and paid for most of it out of desperation, I think). We also went on a little 3-day budget-oriented honeymoon (hiking, canoeing, cycling, etc.) in August because that had already been booked.
FWIW, the money we saved by eloping made it possible for us to buy a house at a much younger age that our peers. To this day, many people assume our parents must have helped us buy our house, but nope, we did it on our own, and I am very proud of that. Had we waited longer, we would have been priced out of this neighborhood. So, for us, eloping was also a smart financial move that had quite a few positive effects down the road.