The Story of My Surprise Wedding — and why you should have a unique, untraditional wedding too!
That’s right — my husband and I had a SURPRISE WEDDING! It was the most magical day and I have zero regrets.
Read the story and the details on how we pulled it off!
THE ENGAGEMENT
In case you didn’t know, my husband Trevor and I moved to Kamloops from Saskatchewan in October of 2021. I’ve wanted to live in BC since I was younger, so when Trevor was laid off due to covid in May of 2021, I knew right away that this was our chance to take a new adventure in our life. It wasn’t long before Trevor started applying for jobs in British Columbia and before I knew it, he was down on one knee in Banff asking me to marry him! We got engaged on July 2nd, 2021 in my favourite place.
We had been dreaming up our wedding day for a while before we got engaged, and one day the idea of having a surprise wedding came up and we were intrigued by the thought of what that would look like for us. On our road trip home from Banff while sitting in our blissful, newly-engaged bubble, we immediately starting planning the logistics of our wedding day.
“What are we going to tell our parents?”
“Who should we tell? Who should we not tell?”
“What kind of venue do we want?”
“Is this crazy?”
“Should we just elope instead??”
“No, let’s DO THIS BABYYYYY!”
After telling both our parents about our plans and watching them warm up to the idea of such an untraditional wedding day, they all agreed that it was our wedding day and if this was what we wanted, then we should go for it. I think my dad was definitely the most on-board! He loves games, pranks, and jokes, so imagining such a wild surprise made him really excited. We are so thankful for the support from our parents during this process and definitely couldn’t have done it without them.
THE PLAN
Barely skipping a beat, Trevor and I jumped into planning and securing vendors. We knew how much pressure can be put on weddings to be perfect, but all we wanted was to celebrate our love. That’s all that mattered to us! Both of us wanted something special, memorable, and unique but we didn’t want to be planning for 1-2 years+ like most people. We also knew that our plans to move to BC could quickly approach at any time, so it was important to us to be surrounded by friends and family as a sort of ‘good-bye’. So our idea was to host our “engagement party” that was actually our wedding day; for our guests to show up and hear “This isn’t our engagement party, it’s our wedding — SURPRISE! We’re getting married today!” We knew our idea meant us getting married in just a few short months, but we were determined to work as a team to bring this dream to life. Once we secured a venue we were really able to start booking vendors and bringing everything together. We were lucky to have a lot of people helping us in the 3 months of planning but ultimately did most of the work leading up to the day ourselves.
While obviously it was a very stressful 3 months, I can’t imagine it being that much more stressful than a regular wedding. The most stressful part was finding vendors (specifically a venue because you can’t really book anything until you have a date secured) but after that all came together nicely. Our approach was really just having one long (and albeit daunting!) list of to-dos and then splitting up tasks between the 2 of us. We work well as a team, so this was easy for us. Majority of people who plan a wedding are super busy in the 2-3 months leading up to their wedding no matter how long you’ve been planning, so we really just sped the process up.
We were able to save a lot of money by doing things ourselves and not spending money on things that weren’t important to us. We splurged on our photographer because photos were really important to us. We saved on our venue and décor because that just wasn’t high on our priority list — we wanted something nice of course but it didn’t need to be grand. We ended up booking at a golf course! Never exclude golf courses from your wedding venue search; they often are very affordable and the outdoor spaces are stunning.
FAQ: was it surprise for everyone?
We told our wedding party and some close family; my grandpa did not know and was very surprised (and maybe a little pissed but worth it lol). We also told some out of town folks so they could be sure they could make it. But I’d say about 80% of guests were surprised!
EXTRA TIP:
We even sent out fake save the dates with our engagement party invites to really throw people off. The fake date actually hasn’t even happened yet; it was June 3rd, 2023!
THE WEDDING DAY
Another tradition we wanted to avoid on our wedding day was waiting until the ceremony to see each other. We wanted our wedding day to be about us and our love, so of course we spent most of the day together! We had to decorate the venue together on the morning-of (thankfully with a ton of other hands to help) after which we want our separate ways to get ready.
We had our first look around 1pm and spent the day taking all our photos and celebrating with our wedding party and families. We rented a party bus which was the best decision we could have made. Listen couples, I know they’re expensive. It’s almost criminal how expensive renting a party bus is for your wedding day — 3-4 hours can run you close to $1000 sometimes more. But IT IS SO WORTH IT. Well, it was to us anyway. Having everyone in one place and avoiding the hassle of coordinating separate vehicles made the day flow easily. Our party bus also was the reason for one of my favourite moments on my entire wedding day —
Just 5 days before our wedding, Trevor accepted a job in Kamloops, BC. That’s right; 5 DAYS BEFORE. On our way to the venue to attend our ceremony, Morgan Wallen’s “More Than my Hometown” was playing and it was such a special and emotional moment for all of us. At our reception, we announced to our guests that we would be moving to BC in just 2 weeks. In our original plans of our surprise, we really wanted to tell everyone in person that it was actually our wedding so we could see our guests’ reactions. But just wasn’t lining up time-wise so instead everyone showed up to see our ceremony set up and a sign that said ‘Surprise! Welcome to the wedding of Kaeli and Trevor’. I do wish I could have seen some of our guests’ faces!
We arrived at our venue for the most beautiful golden hour ceremony. It was October in Saskatchewan, so usually it’s pretty cold and windy. But the weather on our day was beyond perfect — no wind, few clouds, and a calm love in the air. It was truly magical. The 2 of us took off with our photographer to take a few golden hour photos but returned to our ceremony within 30 mins; this was another reaosn for our late ceremony because we liked not having our guests leave between ceremony and reception. They were able to head straight to the reception area for cocktails! We had a buffet dinner of perogies and sausage (both of us are part Ukrainian) which was a hit.
And then we laughed, danced, and drank into the night with all of the people that love us and who had played a part is getting us to where we are today. No regrets; best day ever.
