need Advice: Surprise wedding planning

I think the idea of a surprise wedding is really fun, but logistically very difficult. Especially if you’re in a different state/people may have to travel. Honestly, that doesn’t sound realistic. Can you host something at your house or a nearby restaurant? For that few people, I think you could find something nice and it’s a lot easier to pull a surprise with something like that.

View Quoted Comment Actually most of our guest list is local to CA! (FH is Cali born & raised), so only us, a friend (& her SO, & my parents would need to travel. I know I can get my family to go easily as we're all big on traveling but its the friends I'm worried about. I know they'll want/need to take PTO and I don't want them to worry about thinking they'll need to request double the time off 🙈.


We're in a townhouse so no yard unfortunately 😞. We could look into a local restaurant too though!
The other thing is we basically have the whole "elopement style wedding" planned for CA and have our vendors on standby (waiting on a park permit + date + airbnb location). So if we ditch that we'll lose all our deposits/the few vendors that were already paid in full.

View Quoted Comment I understand. In that case it sounds like it’s really just the one friend. I would either fill them in or accept that they likely won’t be able to attend.

I have had a friend and a cousin both plan surprise weddings! My cousin’s was a bit different than what you are proposing- they didn’t have friends present, just parents and siblings, so it was a bit easier. Their families already had a Hawaiian vacation planned, so the couple secretly planned a wedding on the beach and a nice dinner after. My friend, however, planned something more along the lines of what you are talking about. They also had to postpone multiple times, but theirs was due to health issues and a death in the family (pre-covid). They invited people under the guise of a surprise anniversary party. Her fiancé contacted everyone and said he was throwing her a surprise anniversary party and he REALLY wanted everyone to be there to show support for her because she had been feeling really down after everything they had been through during the past year and that she had lost all excitement for the wedding, so he wanted to get her back in good spirits, excited about planning the wedding again, and to show her that she had people who loved her and supported her. It was the perfect ruse- I think every single person invited showed up aside from one couple who had already booked a family vacation. They booked a beautiful venue and and told everyone that she was under the impression she was going there for a nice anniversary dinner with her fiancé. They had everyone hide in a room to “surprise” her when she walked in. Instead, all the guests were surprised when the couple walked in wearing a suit and wedding dress! Literally no one knew about the surprise other than the bride and groom- not even their parents! The energy was amazing! Everyone was clapping and cheering and crying. To be honest, after witnessing it, I seriously contemplated doing a surprise wedding as well! LOL

This sounds nice in theory, but I'd be worried some people may not make it a priority to attend. The day arrives, they're feeling meh or something comes up so they don't come last minute thinking it's not a big deal, or they show up feeling very underdressed once they realize it's a wedding.