Why did we not elope?

All this wedding planning is really wearing me out. This week I went home for two days to plan wedding stuff. Although it was great to see my family, the picking and planning was overwhelming. I chose ties and vests, flowers, tablecloths and chair sashes, the cake, and centerpieces all within 24 hours. I'm not normally a meticulous person by nature, but by the time I was down to the centerpieces, I had really stopped caring. Some sand and a candle inside a vase? sounds good to me. It doesn't really make sense to me why people spend so much money and time on an event that is only going to last a couple of hours, but that's our culture I suppose.
Also I really am getting sick of being so far away from Leland. The reason we decided to get married was exactly that, we wanted to be married. And these four plus months of waiting has been torture. I know I wrote that post about how much I love skyping, and it's true, for some reasons I do love it, but really it's just a substitute for what I really love, which is actually being with Leland. I miss him so much, and he is so busy that we hardly get to talk the way we used to. I just wish we were already married. I want to be there every night when he gets home from work, and I want to cook for him and go on dates, and just be with him. I know things aren't going to be perfect after the wedding, and that marriage brings a lot of challenges of it's own, but right now, all I want is for us to be together.