Surprise Wedding!

[LABride2B]

Hi. I'm new to the boards. I posted an intro just a few minutes ago.

Anyhow, my fiancee' and I plan to invite everyone for a Birthday/Engagement party, where we will actually end up doing our ceremony. We wanted to keep it low cost and just have fun so we decided to do it at a State Park not too far from where we live. We are just going to do a BBQ and have some fun! After an hour or two of everyone arrives, we are going to change (into something not TOO dressy, but dressy enough for the occasion-- I'll probably wear a nice sun dress or something.. I want something flowy as we are getting married by the water on a nice day in Spring)... then we plan on walking out and surprising everyone. My soon to be mother in law and father in law, and of course best man and maid of honor, are the only ones in on it. It should be interesting. We plan to have a wedding cake, and instead of a traditional groom cake, we will have a birthday cake. Still working out details. FH is actually at his moms today discussing more with her. I'm supposed to be sleeping so I can work the graveyard shift tonight at the police station. So much for sleep....

BTW, I desperately need help with wording for the invitation for this. I want something fun. However, I'm having a hard time coming up with something for both a birthday AND "engagement" party. Any help would be appreciated.

[gwenshack]

Congrats on your engagement and I really love your imaginative scheme. Ten points for creativity!

Hope everything turns out well - how long to you have to plan everything?

Welcome to OW!

[WebLady]

Sounds like fun!

[LABride2B]

Thanks. That took both of our heads to come up with. I think a little more of mine, but FH is pretty good about discussing plans and helping with ideas. We plan to get married on May 1. It's on a Friday, but we have it covered as far as guests being able to attend... which is why we have my FMIL in on it. Going to send ou invites about 2-3 months in advance. Not sure exactly how I should go about that. So... I have about 7 months to go until the big day.

[acidcookie]

Hey! And omg we thought about doing that same thing! So cool! The thing that made us change our minds is that most of our guests are from out of town (and out of the country) and they may not make it out for our "party," not knowing that they'd actually be missing our wedding. But if you work it out that'll be so much fun! I'll be excited to hear how it goes.

[ChristineLS]

Your wedding sounds similar to mine, save we're not surprising anyone with it. It sounds like a low-stress, high-fun wedding. enjoy! :D

Invitation wording... maybe something like, "We invite you to our birthday/engagement party in which we simultaneously celebrate our (his? your?) longer life and the beginning of our future life together". It's so cheesy it's practically mozzarella, but you can probably come up with something better :)

[RosieAngel]

Hi and welcome to Onewed! This sounds like a great idea! DH's best friend's Mom did this for her second wedding! I'd word it as:

It's [LABride2B's/LAGroom2B]'s birthday, and s/he got engaged to [LABride2B/LAGroom2B]!
Celebrate both joyful events with them on [Date]
at [Location, Time]

[LABride2B]

Oh i like that. I'll hold on to that one. Thanks.