They say every girl dreams of her wedding day growing up. I was never really one of those girls. Not that I dreamt of a surprise wedding by any means, but I always knew I wouldn’t go traditional. I knew my wedding story would be different. And as much as I love to throw a party, I dreaded wedding planning.

We were engaged on June 10th, 2017 when we were in Amsterdam, after nearly eleven years together.

As we had some family coming in from out of town in mid-July, we chose to organize an engagement party. At some point, we joked that we should just turn this into a wedding, but not tell anyone. Who doesn’t like surprises? And we cringed at the idea of wedding planning with family.

Operation Surprise Wedding was born and set for July 19th, 2017.

Wedding Planning Is Stressful. Surprise weddings are no exception.

Neither of us wanted to take on wedding planning that we knew would likely involve arguments over stupid stuff. We wanted our wedding story to be different.

Personally, I think that sometimes parents can get a little more involved than they need to, and when they’re putting up the money, it can be hard to stand up for what YOU want for YOUR WEDDING. That’s not something either of us wanted.

We wanted to start married life off with no wedding debt and intact relationships with both sides of our families.

In our opinion:

To spend tens of thousands of dollars of either our money (ha!) or our parents’ money is not something that appealed to us. Being the centre of attention did not appeal to us. We wanted something simple, and that showed off our individual personalities and was on the smaller side.

We know plenty of people that have had the weddings of their dreams. And we know people that have had the wedding of their parents dreams. Sometimes we’ve seen people that put more effort into the details of their big day, instead of simultaneously working on their relationship.

The wedding planning process can put a lot of stress on couples. The end goal is to have a happy and successful marriage. It’s not all about your wedding.

Personally, we’d rather take that money and travel somewhere.

Whether you want a traditional wedding, a big wedding, small wedding, elopement, destination wedding – it should only be up to and matter to you two.

It’s your wedding story – no one else’s!

Hiccups – Round One

Operation surprise wedding came with two problems.

First, my parents retired and moved down to Mexico. They had a planned trip in August to come up for a few weeks, and I knew they wouldn’t want to change their plans.

Second, my sister lived in Saskatchewan, and getting time off with such short notice can be a problem. Especially since she was about six weeks away from moving back to BC.

My parents were fine to celebrate when they came to visit the following month.

My sister worked tirelessly to try and get time off approved on such short notice.

Surprise Wedding At Risk

Wedding planning was proving to be a bit of a pain, and even more so since we could not ask for any help.

While my sister was trying to get time off when others were away, she wasn’t having much success.

I had decided that if my sister wouldn’t be able to make it out, we’d cancel the operation surprise wedding, and go back to the originally scheduled engagement party.

In the meantime, we had submitted a request to book our rooftop through our strata and we did receive approval so we knew one thing was in place!

My sister’s time off was denied twice. We decided to cancel the surprise wedding and carry on with the engagement party. We’d have plenty of time to think of a new version of our wedding story.

The following day my sister was chatting with someone from work explaining what we had tried to make happen, and this person had said to her that they needed to find a way to make this work. Weddings only happen once! Sometimes 😉

Her workplace made it happen – operation surprise wedding was back on the table!

Hiccups – Round Two

Remember how I said we had a confirmed venue? Yeeeeeeeaaaaaah.

When I say to you, right after we found out we could make my sister flying out to BC for a day and a half, that the strata now had a problem with our booking, I mean right after.

What’s a good old fashioned wedding story without a hiccup?

They strata council had received an offer from a film company to book out our rooftop with zero resident access for 3 or 4 days.

Naturally, occupancy was to start on the day of our wedding.

We are pretty flexible people and we understand what this contract meant for our building. Unfortunately, we had to say no. We did explain that we were going to have an engagement party, with the family that was in from out of town, and it was the only day that worked.

Changing the date was non-negotiable. This was a surprise wedding, not an engagement party.

The film company wanted to buy us out and we said no. We did state if they can find us an equivalent venue, on the same day, that we didn’t have to pay for, we’d agree.

The film company conceded; they agreed to film the day after our wedding.

Back to wedding planning we went.

We won the war; kind of.

We had no access to the roof until 4:00 pm on our wedding day. Guests were arriving at 5:00 pm. I feel like my event planning friends feel my pain here.

The film crew spent all day getting equipment up on the roof so they could start filming the following day, and be out of our way so we could

With this in mind, someone from their organization had to be present during our wedding, to ensure the equipment was not damaged.

With that being said, we were getting our wedding day; the film company getting their venue, and the strata getting the contract. A win-win-win!

Venue, photographer, caterer, and rings were all in place. Now, we needed an officiant to pull off this surprise wedding ..and make it legal.

Civil Ceremony Officiant

The Day Before

With everything in place, and family in from out of town, there was nothing to do except go get my toes done. I’m a runner, so covering up these toes with polish, is a necessity.

My work day ended at 3:30 pm which coincidentally fell in line with when my sisters flight was landing from Saskatchewan. With that, I swung by the airport on my way home to pick her up, and get to our pedicure appointment.

Since no one knew she was in town, no pictures could be shared. If my local Aunt and Uncle knew she was in town, their suspicions would be confirmed and the surprise would be partially ruined. We wanted everyone to be surprised – suspicious or not!

Surprise number one was on deck. We walked into our condo to surprise my two Aunt’s that were in town (for like the first time in forever might I add) with my sisters appearance.

Success; they were shocked & happy to see her fly in for the party, and that they would have a chance to catch up. More importantly, they were able to catch up with her.

We caught up, ate dinner, and drove them back to their air BnB.

We were buzzing with excitement, but knew we needed to head to bed. Our wedding story was about to begin, but no one had a clue 🙂

Keeping Up With Appearances – Life, not the show

If you’re young, you’ll have no idea what show I referenced there, and for that, I apologize. Just an epic British sitcom that started in 1990. 10/10 would recommend.

We woke up in the morning and went to work for the first part of the day.

I did have a new staff member, so it wasn’t exactly an ideal time for me to be away.

No one at work was any the wiser. Damn we’re good!

After work, I hopped on the train to meet my sister downtown. We were set to get our hair done at the Nordstrom Dry Bar (easy choice), and grab lunch.

If I learned anything from all other weddings, its that eating is important 😉

Jason was grabbing all of our dishware and cutlery from the rental place, and cramming it into our GTI. Literally.

As we were on a serious time crunch and trying to limit overlap with the film company, the setup was a little chaotic.

Surprise Wedding Ceremony

All decor was simple and suitable for the outdoors.

Blankets, table runners, lanterns, and hanging lights, were all purchased at Ikea.

The signs for the food and drinks were purchased at Michaels.

Catering was through Adrian who has a food truck that Jason visits near work, and was outstanding.

The wine/champagne were purchased through Everything Wine.

All the beer was purchased through our local liquor store, Legacy.

Our rings are from Tiffany & Co. Our experience was nothing short of amazing, and we felt very well taken care of the entire time we were there picking out our wedding bands.

When it came to photography, we wanted action shots, where capturing the feeling of the day was important for us.

We wanted to be able to capture the feeling of the day. Our photographer was Joanne from Umbrella Tree Photography, and she captured our wedding day perfectly.

Forceful smiling for hours on end, makes me want to crawl under a table and never come out! She captured the essence of the day. Kind of like how Joey took the essence of the chair 😉

Our Perfect [Surprise] Wedding Day

I logged into my work computer, changed my name, sent an email and went to bed. Let’s just say I awoke to my fair share of text messages 😉

If we had to do it all over again, we’d do nothing different

Would we recommend this to everyone? No. Everyone has different circumstances, dreams, and desires. But, if you’re looking for a way to avoid a traditional wedding, we can tell you that it is 100% worth it. Not having any help was very difficult, and lying to family and friends was also insanely difficult, so that is something you should keep in mind.

Wedding ceremonies and receptions are different for everyone, so do something that works within your budget and personality. And parents, I think that you need to remember it is their wedding story, not yours.

Less arguing and the healthier the relationship makes for an excellent wedding!

Operation surprise wedding was so successful and we are so thankful for everyone that attended and helped us write our wedding story. We wouldn’t be where we are today without these people.

If you don’t know our engagement story, you can read about it here.

Marriage / Wedding Advice

We’ve all received solicited or unsolicited advice, right? What is the best piece of marriage advice someone has given you?

Spending time together is important, it is also important to have separation. Too much of a good thing is never good.

Comment below!

What did you love most about your wedding day? Are you planning a wedding? I’d love to hear all about your experience(s) by commenting below. Is there anything you wish you could change?

By sharing our experiences, we can help others who are entering the planning stages of their upcoming wedding day, by commenting below 🙂