Surprise! You're at my wedding!

[Jan74]

Twirly said it all. If you don't invite people, you are wrong and rude and should have thrown a wedding. If you invite them, whatever you did, your hospitality was not good enough, and you offended them and everyone who ever got married, ever, by doin' it rong.

You can't win.

[ydpubs]

Consider how rude, intrusive and obnoxious the paparazzi is I can't blame any celeb for getting married in this way. They are entitled to their privacy and thought it was very sweet.

I don't get the big deal about a surprise wedding, why it should be an offense. How on earth is that wrong or insulting? That smacks of looking for offense to me.

Heck, I figure you get spared any chance for bridezilla or wedding drama or gift grabs. All a bonus IMO.

[Sophia]

I had toyed with the idea.  If we had, we would have called it an engagement party, and the relatives who would have had to fly in would have known.  The reason I tossed out the idea was that I knew planning a traditional wedding with my mom would be fun. 

[MissRose]

Its probably easier for the rich and famous to pull something like this off especially if they are well known and/or in the public eye.

I am not offended by them doing so for a wedding.  Paparazzi  know they can make money off the pics, and not all celebs appreciate intrusions in certain aspects of their lives.

[CakeEater]

I was a guest at a surprise wedding. I really like weddings and the build-up to them, so I felt a bit disappointed that I'd missed all that. The event was billed as a BBQ engagement party, so I really wasn't dressed for a wedding.

The party was at her parents' farm, so buses were brought in to bus all guests to the church in town, about 15 minutes away. Because the party was supposed to start at 5pm, they left the buses until 7pm to allow everyone time to be late. By the time everyone got on the buses, got us to town and started the wedding, it was after 7.30. The ceremony was a full Catholic mass, and by the time everyone got back to the party venue it was close to 9, we didn't eat until close to 10.

The couple went and had photos done after the ceremony, so no-one really saw them until the meal started, then they did speeches etc, which ended up in a much later evening than I had been planning. Being pregnant at the time, I struggled with not eating until that late, even though there had been nibblies earlier, 10pm was far too late.

I don't think you can have it both ways. You either do the whole BWW thing, scheduling it properly, or you do a quick ceremony, and on with the party. This was someone just wanting to be quirky, but wanting the whole 'wedding' regalia as well. It just didn't work.

[Rosey]

I was a guest at a surprise wedding. I really like weddings and the build-up to them, so I felt a bit disappointed that I'd missed all that. The event was billed as a BBQ engagement party, so I really wasn't dressed for a wedding.

The party was at her parents' farm, so buses were brought in to bus all guests to the church in town, about 15 minutes away. Because the party was supposed to start at 5pm, they left the buses until 7pm to allow everyone time to be late. By the time everyone got on the buses, got us to town and started the wedding, it was after 7.30. The ceremony was a full Catholic mass, and by the time everyone got back to the party venue it was close to 9, we didn't eat until close to 10.

The couple went and had photos done after the ceremony, so no-one really saw them until the meal started, then they did speeches etc, which ended up in a much later evening than I had been planning. Being pregnant at the time, I struggled with not eating until that late, even though there had been nibblies earlier, 10pm was far too late.

I don't think you can have it both ways. You either do the whole BWW thing, scheduling it properly, or you do a quick ceremony, and on with the party. This was someone just wanting to be quirky, but wanting the whole 'wedding' regalia as well. It just didn't work.

Ohhhhh, this would drive me crazy. First of all, the buses rendered you unable to choose when you wanted to leave.* Then, a full Catholic ceremony? I'm going to give them credit here and assume they knew everyone would be okay with attending a Catholic ceremony, but that sounds loooong. I would be starving if I expected to show up for a barbecue at 5 and found myself waiting until 10 to eat. I would hate the idea of sitting around for two hours waiting for an event to start simply because I showed up on time for an event I didn't know was happening.

That whole thing would make me very uncomfortable. Did the bride still wear the full white regalia? I don't understand that either. If you're having your surprise wedding under the pretense of a barbecue, I'm guessing the majority of your guests are going to be of the jeans and t-shirt variety, maybe throw in a few summer dresses . . . and then a bride in a foofy white dress with cathedral train and massive veil? I did appreciate the way Bertinelli's wedding outfit appeared to fit in with the clothes of her guests (for the most part).

*I confess to disliking all weddings that insist on having guests use the happy couple's pre-arranged transportation. A friend of mine got married in our hometown, and it was kind of bizarre. She got married outdoors at 2pm in June (Midwest, so picture hideous humidity and more bugs than you've ever seen in your life). All the guests were standing in rows among a garden. The idea was truly fabulous, but the reality was that there were no seats, the heat index was off the charts, and the bugs were made worse by the flowers. Then there were three hours before the reception started. Something went wrong with the reception ceremony, and they kicked everybody out an hour early - this was eight or nine hours after the ceremony started. The bride's family had arranged for two limousines to circle from the reception venue to the downtown area where the main hotels and parking garages were. The only problem was that the limousines were set to circle at the scheduled ending time, so we were once again outside for at least an hour wait (big group, two limos). Every time someone called a taxi or something similar, the bride was right there telling people to just, "WAIT FOR THE LIMOS!!!!"

[Lisbeth]

I don't get the big deal about a surprise wedding, why it should be an offense. How on earth is that wrong or insulting? That smacks of looking for offense to me.

It's not something that has to be "gotten."

Close friends and relatives don't like being kept in the dark, and some people don't like the deceptiveness and bait-and-switch of "surprise" weddings.  They don't like getting an invitation for one thing and then finding out that it's for something else.

And some people just don't like weddings (or aren't in the mood to attend them, perhaps due to breakup or other bad incident in their own personal lives or just had a hard day) and don't appreciate getting this sprung on them any more than they would appreciate coming home to "Suuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!"

[Sharnita]

I agree with KeenReader.  There are plenty of things I don't "get" that are still valid.  I don't "get" why some people hate going to church weddings.  I don't "get" why it bothers some people to eat meat.  Those things don't bother me in the slightest. They never will.  That doesn't mean that people who are bothered by them are looking for offense or unreasonable. 

[CakeEater]

That whole thing would make me very uncomfortable. Did the bride still wear the full white regalia? I don't understand that either. If you're having your surprise wedding under the pretense of a barbecue, I'm guessing the majority of your guests are going to be of the jeans and t-shirt variety, maybe throw in a few summer dresses . . . and then a bride in a foofy white dress with cathedral train and massive veil? I did appreciate the way Bertinelli's wedding outfit appeared to fit in with the clothes of her guests (for the most part).

Yep - full wedding thing. She had a pretty simple white dress but with hair and makeup done early at the party, then by the time she entered the church, whole wedding dress, veil etc. And, yes, the rest of us were dressed in jeans, etc apart from the immediate families who were dressed properly for a wedding.

I didn't really feel bad about not being dressed appropriately for a wedding, because obviously we didn't know. But I like dressing up for weddings, so felt annoyed that a dressing up opportunity had been missed.

[DangerMouth]

That whole thing would make me very uncomfortable. Did the bride still wear the full white regalia? I don't understand that either. If you're having your surprise wedding under the pretense of a barbecue, I'm guessing the majority of your guests are going to be of the jeans and t-shirt variety, maybe throw in a few summer dresses . . . and then a bride in a foofy white dress with cathedral train and massive veil? I did appreciate the way Bertinelli's wedding outfit appeared to fit in with the clothes of her guests (for the most part).

Yep - full wedding thing. She had a pretty simple white dress but with hair and makeup done early at the party, then by the time she entered the church, whole wedding dress, veil etc. And, yes, the rest of us were dressed in jeans, etc apart from the immediate families who were dressed properly for a wedding.

I didn't really feel bad about not being dressed appropriately for a wedding, because obviously we didn't know. But I like dressing up for weddings, so felt annoyed that a dressing up opportunity had been missed.

And in my family, it would be horribly rude to spring a mass on someone without allowing them to fast if they wanted to take communion. Just another consideration.

[judecat]

The last Catholic wedding I attended,  it was more than an hour between the start of the service and the time of the communion,  which does in fact satisfy the requirement for fasting.

[Sharnita]

I would think that in most cases by the time you said "this is really a wedding, we are going to head over to church for Mass" and then got everybody to church you'd have at least an hour until communion.