What Is an Elope-Moon? Real Couples, Real Data, Hoi An, Vietnam
- Leanne Summers
- 2 days ago
- 14 min read
What Is an Elope-Moon? (And Why So Many Couples End Up in Hoi An)
TL;DR: An elope-moon combines the elopement and the honeymoon into a single trip. One destination, one budget, one holiday that is entirely yours. I've officiated 500+ weddings in Vietnam since 2015, and these are my statistics. Since 2023, one in three of the ceremonies I've officiated has been an elopement, compared to almost none before 2020. The average couple who comes to Vietnam to get married has been together for nearly seven years. Most come with four or fewer people. Nearly half had a prior connection to Vietnam before they chose it. The average ceremony runs 27 minutes. Nobody watches the clock. Hoi An keeps coming up because the weather is great, the food is the kind you spend years trying to recreate, and a luxury week here costs a fraction of what it would in a comparable destination. Da Nang airport is 45 minutes away. The e-visa covers most nationalities. It's inexpensive and easy.
An elope-moon is a holiday that combines the elopement and the honeymoon into a single trip. Instead of a wedding in one place and a honeymoon somewhere else, separated by months of planning and a reception you can barely remember, you choose one destination and do it all there. You arrive, you settle in, you get married, and then the rest of the trip is yours.
The elope-moon is not a new idea, but it has a name now - and in the years since COVID forced couples to rethink what a wedding actually needed to be, it has become something closer to a movement.
I started officiating weddings in Vietnam in 2015, and have clocked up over 500. I have had more conversations about elope-moons since 2022 than about any other topic. Couples from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the United States, and Canada are choosing them - not because they cannot afford a big wedding, but because they looked at what a big wedding actually costs and decided to spend that money on something they would actually remember. Hoi An comes up for consistent reasons. At 4:30 pm, the heat breaks and the light goes soft. Couples and every photographer in town build their day around this golden hour of light. Hoi An is a town small enough to walk everywhere, with a beach ten minutes away by taxi. It's UNESCO-listed, and there's a photo opportunity everywhere you turn. And the food, which surprises almost everyone: pho, cao lau, white rose dumplings, and banh mi from the family-owned shops that have operated for decades. Most couples spend the rest of their lives looking for anything that comes close. The logistics are simpler than people expect. Da Nang airport is 45 minutes away, connects through Singapore and Bangkok, and Vietnam's e-visa covers most nationalities. A couple who would be stretching to afford a mid-range venue in Sydney or London can stay somewhere genuinely beautiful here and still have money left over.
The statistics and stories in this article are drawn from Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers' client records - ceremony questionnaires, planning conversations, and the couples themselves. I call it Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers ceremony miner data. The patterns are real, and they are mine. I have been officiating weddings and elopements in Vietnam since 2015.
What Wedding Trends Changed After COVID
After COVID, wedding trends changed as couples began to ask, "Do we really want this?" Couples who had booked venues, made deposits, secured catering packages, and reserved 100 guest seats watched it all collapse - twice in some cases - and came out the other side asking a different question. Not "how do we reschedule?" but "is this how we imagine our wedding?"
Kara came from a large family and had always assumed that meant a large wedding. When she started actually planning one, something shifted. "I was overwhelmed by the idea of a large traditional wedding in the States," she wrote. She and her partner chose Hoi An instead, with a small group of friends, and a day that belonged entirely to them. Bill had visited Vietnam in 2018 and hadn't forgotten it. Kelly had never been. She understood it immediately when she arrived.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: In more than 35% of the planning conversations, couples said their interest in the destination began with someone else's story: a friend's wedding, a parent's trip, a video shown over breakfast.
Gwen and Matt have been together since 2011. They take annual family holidays to Thailand and Vietnam. Matt proposed at home in September 2024, after more than 12 years together with their daughters, holding a sign that read: "Mummy, will you marry Daddy?" Gwen said yes in her loungewear and slippers. When it came time to choose a wedding, they did what they always do: they booked the Vietnam holiday. "We never wanted a big wedding," Gwen wrote in her questionnaire. "We wanted our loved ones to be part of these memories."
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: More than a 25% of couples in my questionnaire data explicitly named the scale or pressure of a traditional wedding back home as their reason for choosing Vietnam instead. The language is consistent across questionnaires: overwhelmed, not what we wanted, too much about other people. The decision to come here is rarely about budget. It is almost always about what kind of day they actually want to feel.
How Couples End Up in Hoi An or Danang
Kim had a different kind of connection. His mother had adventured through Vietnam before he was born, and her stories became part of the family mythology. When he and Allie started planning their ceremony in Hoi An, Kim stepped into an ao dai for the first time on the morning of the wedding. The ceremony script I wrote for them began with that detail - the specific way that Vietnam was already part of his story before he arrived.
Mary Ann and Steve had planned to get married in October. They wanted something special, low-key, and that fit into their holiday without a lot of fanfare. They wanted the gravitas and the romance without the hoopla. I gently pointed out that October on Vietnam's central coast is the heart of typhoon season. For me, this is a real risk, a headache I don't need, and definitely not marketing caution. They moved the entire trip to April, chose a coffee shop in the rice paddies over the beach option they had originally imagined, and ended up loving it more than the version they had planned.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: More than 40% of the elope-moon couples I worked with had originally planned to marry at a different time of year or in a different destination entirely. Thailand and Bali came up most often as the abandoned alternative. The pivot to Vietnam is usually triggered by something small: YouTube, a conversation, a practical question about the weather.
Lilly and Edmond chose the Hyatt Regency in Da Nang for their elopement in June 2025. Ed had arranged a slow dance as part of the ceremony. It was just the two of them, for video and photos. Just because you're not in front of 50 guests, you can still incorporate traditional wedding elements. They stayed for a three weeks in total and ate their way around Vietnam
Helen and Marco flew in from Canada with their annual holiday buddies in December 2025 and took over Hadana Boutique Resort for five nights. The ceremony was in the resort garden. Dinner was at Mango Mango in the Old Town, in a private room upstairs overlooking the lantern street, Chef Duc's tasting menu, drinks on consumption. Total budget including planning, photography, hair and makeup, and flowers: around $3,500 USD.
Aubrie and Angel were married on a beach in Vietnam at 6 am. Just the three of us: the couple and me. The ceremony I wrote for them opened with: "6 am on a beach in Vietnam. Just the three of us." That is the whole elope-moon in one image.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: Nearly half the couples in my questionnaire data had a prior connection to Vietnam before they chose it for their ceremony: a previous visit, a family memory, years spent living here, or a heritage connection that made the country feel partly theirs already. Vietnam is rarely chosen randomly. It earns its place.
Cate and Mal took their first overseas trip together to Vietnam in 2023. Three years later, they came back to get married. Some places become yours without you quite deciding it. When it came time to choose a wedding destination, there was no conversation to be had. They already knew.
Patty had never been to Vietnam. Her partner's parents were born here. She and Son chose a Buddhist blessing in Hoi An to honour Son's heritage and to be wed in a way that felt meaningful and authentic for them.
What Couples Are Actually Planning
The questionnaire I send every couple before I write their ceremony is where I learn what the day is actually for. The answers are always more specific than people expect themselves to give.
Lara and Stu flew from the UK to elope on An Bang Beach in December 2025. They had arranged to ship paper lanterns home to the UK for an after-party with the family. The ceremony was just the two of them, the photographer, and the beach.
Jocelyn and David are coming in July 2026 with their seven-year-old daughter, as the flower girl and four guests. They want a free-spirited, rustic beach ceremony on the beach in the morning. Jocelyn missed Vietnam in her younger backpacking years and always regretted it. They've talked about making their backpacker adventure a reality for years. They're combining their wedding with that adventure. They don't want their wedding to feel like a performance. They want it to feel like something that is actually happening to them.
Dan and Lyla had been together for eleven years when they came to Vietnam to finally make it official. Lyla's parents are Vietnamese, and Vietnam has always been her favourite place on earth. They chose an elopement. No audience, no performance. Eleven years of building something together, marked in the place that felt most like home to her.
Sarah and Mike flew from the United States. Mike described Vietnam as "a tropical paradise as far away from their families as they could get." They chose Vietnam for an elopement. No big party. Just the two of them, somewhere new to both of them, doing the thing they had both decided was the only way they wanted it.
Joanne came to me with a secret. She was planning a vow renewal as a surprise for her husband, Simon, who believed he was going to a photo shoot at their resort. The daughters were to hold the rings. We coordinated a quiet arrival and the reveal. Justin had no idea until he walked in.
Tim and Elizabeth renewed their vows on their tenth wedding anniversary in Hoi An's old town in September 2025. They wanted to honour their journey and their love in a courtyard surrounded by greenery. They had dinner after. Just the two of them in one of the most beautiful towns in Southeast Asia - before flying out to Hanoi the next day for the next part of their elope-moon.
Jane and Daniel booked the Riverside Retreat Elopement Package in April 2026. The ceremony included a unity candle. Afterwards, a luxury riverside picnic. Then, photographs through the old town as the light dropped.
These are not random couples with generic preferences. They're humans who knew exactly what they wanted and chose this place to have it.
What the Numbers Show
After more than a decade of ceremonies and three years of detailed post-COVID questionnaire data, a few patterns stand out clearly enough to be worth sharing.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: The average elope-moon ceremony I officiated in Vietnam ran 22 minutes. That is intentional. It is long enough for the words to land and short enough that nobody is watching the clock. I do not use templates. Every line earns its place — which is what No Boring Bits actually means in practice.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: More than 80% of the ceremonies I conducted took place between 4pm and 6pm. That is the golden hour window that defines the Hoi An ceremony aesthetic. The light on the Thu Bon River at 4:30 in the afternoon is something that is hard to describe until you have seen it. Almost every couple who comes here ends up choosing it.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: The average elope-moon party size was 4 people. Often the couple, a witness or two, and occasionally a flower girl or a child who needed to be part of it. Sometimes it is just the two of them and the photographer. Aubrie and Angel were three: the couple and me, on a beach, at 6am.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: The average couple who comes to Vietnam to get married has been together for nearly seven years. The ceremony is rarely the beginning of the story. It is, in most cases, the formal acknowledgement of something already built - and built slowly.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: Nearly one in three couples in my questionnaire data has a direct connection to Vietnamese heritage - a partner who grew up here, a parent whose stories shaped the trip, ancestors whose country never quite left the family imagination. For those couples, Vietnam is not just a destination. It is, in some sense, a homecoming.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: Since COVID, roughly one in three ceremonies I have officiated has been an elopement - compared to a much smaller fraction in the years before 2020. The proportion of vow renewals has also grown, from almost none pre-COVID to around one in eight ceremonies since 2022. What couples want from a ceremony has changed. The numbers show it.
Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US and Canada together account for the majority of my elope-moon bookings in both years. For couples flying from those countries, Da Nang International Airport is 45 minutes from Hoi An and offers connecting flights to Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong. Vietnam's e-visa covers most nationalities. The logistics are simpler than most people expect.
The Shift Away from Big Weddings
The couples who come to Vietnam to get married are not, on the whole, making a compromise. They are making a choice. The evidence from my questionnaire data suggests that choice is becoming more deliberate, not less.
Before COVID, the majority of the ceremonies I officiated were weddings with significant guest lists. That changed. Since 2022, roughly one in three ceremonies has been an elopement: just the couple, a photographer, and the ceremony itself. Many of the rest are what I'd describe as micro weddings: under twenty people, often far fewer. The large formal wedding, while still present in my bookings, is no longer the default.
The pattern shows up clearly in the questionnaire data. Couples who chose Vietnam over a traditional wedding at home weren't, in most cases, unable to afford a big wedding. They were unwilling to have one. The distinction matters. Fiona came from a large family and had always assumed that meant a large wedding. When she started planning one, something shifted. "I was overwhelmed by the idea," she wrote. She and Moderick chose Hoi An instead. Moderick had seen Vietnam before. Fiona wanted to after hearing all his stories. She understood it immediately when she arrived.
Gwen and Matt have been together since 2011. They have two daughters, an annual Vietnam holiday. "We never wanted a big wedding," Gwen wrote. "We wanted our loved ones to be part of these memories." They added a ceremony to the family trip. That was it. That was the whole plan.
Sarah and Mike wanted simple. A meaningful percentage of elope-moon couples are not running toward Vietnam so much as stepping away from the version of a wedding that was building up around them at home: the guest lists, the venue negotiations, the catering decisions that somehow become the whole conversation. Vietnam offers an exit from that, without asking couples to compromise on the experience itself.
Wedding Celebrant Vietnam - Leanne Summers data: 2023–26: Of the couples in my questionnaire data, fewer than one in ten had what could reasonably be described as a large formal wedding. The majority chose ceremonies of twenty guests or fewer. Nearly a third came with no guests at all — just the couple, a photographer, and the ceremony.
This is not a trend toward budget weddings. The couples coming to Hoi An are staying in luxury resorts, ordering tasting-menu dinners in the old town, and paying for professional photography, florals, and hair and makeup. The shift is philosophical rather than financial. They have looked at what a large wedding actually costs - not in money, but in energy, in compromise, in the gap between what the day is supposed to feel like and what it actually does - and they have decided to spend that currency somewhere else.
Why Hoi An Works So Well
Beyond the aesthetics, there are practical reasons it works for an elope-moon.
The cost of a luxury experience here is a fraction of what the same quality would cost in Europe or Australia. Helen and Marco came with friends from Canada for a five-night stay, a ceremony, and a private tasting-menu dinner in the old town for around $3,500 USD (excluding flights and accommodation - and what was sure to be a massive bar tab.) That figure would not cover the catering deposit at most venues in Sydney or London.
Couples who came expecting to make compromises because they were "keeping it small" frequently end up in properties they could not have afforded at home. That changes how they experience the entire week.
The food matters more than people expect. Hoi An is widely considered one of the best eating destinations in Asia: the legendary pho, cao lau, white rose dumplings, and banh mi are at the top of the list. But once you're here and you scratch below the TikTok noise, you'll find food you'll spend your life trying to find again. You can spend a week eating extraordinarily well at a fraction of what it would cost in a European destination city.
An Bang and Cua Dai beaches are ten minutes from the Old Town, which means couples can have their ceremony in the lantern-lit streets in the late afternoon and spend the following days between the beach, the river, and the market. The town holds the whole trip in a way that very few places do. Danang is 30 minutes by car. The beaches are sublime, and the cosmopolitan city by the beach has real appeal for the younger set. I could eat and drink my way around Danang over a week and not make a dent. It's not so big that you feel like you're lost in Hong Kong, but it's chaotic enough to keep you on your toes:)
What the Ceremony Looks Like
Every ceremony I write is built from scratch around the two people getting married. I do not use templates. No Boring Bits is not a tagline; it is a working standard I apply to every ceremony I write. If a line is not earning its place, it does not make it in.
For elope-moon couples, the ceremony is usually 20 to 30 minutes. It can be just the two of you, or you can bring a small group if you want someone there to witness. I have conducted ceremonies on riverfront terraces, in villa gardens, on private beaches, in boutique hotel courtyards, at rice paddy viewpoints, and in the Old Town streets with life going on around you.
Part of what I do during the planning process is help couples find the setting that will actually suit their day. Sometimes that is a resort pool garden at 5 pm. Sometimes it is a beach at dawn with nobody else around.
After the ceremony, the honeymoon continues. There is no venue to clear, no reception to manage, no family politics to navigate. You have had your wedding, you are in one of the most beautiful towns in Vietnam, and the rest of the trip is yours.
Practical Details
When to visit
The best months for an elope-moon in Hoi An or Danang are February through August. October through early December is the wet season on Vietnam's central coast - typhoon risk is real and worth planning around before you book flights. This is the most common practical mistake I see couples make at the enquiry stage.
How long to allow
Most elope-moon couples stay between seven and twelve days. A week is enough to feel settled. Ten days gives you room to explore beyond Hoi An if you want to add a night in Da Nang or head further south.
What to budget
Ceremony fees vary depending on what is included. I offer ceremony and elopement packages covering the ceremony, vow consultation, and decor. Accommodation in Hoi An ranges from boutique heritage hotels to private villa rentals - at price points that consistently surprise people used to European or Australian costs.
Legal vs symbolic ceremonies
Tourist couples cannot legally marry in Vietnam. A symbolic ceremony is the standard approach and the right one. It is the ceremony you actually want: personal, entirely yours, no bureaucratic constraints on what can be said or how it runs. Most couples have already completed their legal paperwork at home before they arrive.
Ready to Start Planning?
If you are considering an elope-moon in Hoi An, or Danang, I would love to hear about it. Send me an email with your date range and what you are imagining, and we can start from there.
Are you still keen? Let's chat.
I'm Leanne Summers, founder of Wedding Celebrant Vietnam and a chief wedding celebrant in Vietnam and Asia. I'm a former corporate lawyer who took life too seriously. I found my sense of humour while travelling through Vietnam. I'm now lucky enough to spend my time wordsmithing wedding ceremonies, officiating and planning elopements and micro weddings for couples who've travelled worldwide to celebrate their marriage in Vietnam.
You can reach me at leanne@weddingcelebrantvietnam.com or drop me a line on FB: @weddingcelebrantvietnam or Insta: @celebrant_weddings_vietnam
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