Ambush Weddings Are the New Weddings

Everyone wants to feel special on their wedding day, a very understandable desire that is driving Americans to ever-greater heights of nuptial absurdity. The latest development: surprise weddings sprung on unsuspecting guests. Ta-da!

Because why wouldn’t you take your entertaining cues from Mark Zuckerberg, Jessa from Girls and LeAnn Rhimes?

According to the New York Post, the next time your friends invite you to, say, a birthday party, it might very well play out like this:

“Our Brooklyn friends have become like a second family to us,” Phan began as iPhones flashed. “And keep out your cellphone cameras! Because we’re getting married — right now!”

The room erupted in cheers and tears as the couple dashed off to change into their wedding finery.

Don’t mind the emotional whiplash, buddy, cause you’ve just been WEDDING AMBUSHED:

“Ambush weddings are part of a bigger trend of couples doing away with the traditional way of doing weddings,” says Carmen Feliciano, CEO of pennyandmary.com, a New York-based wedding vendor site.

“It’s driven by a few things: cost, need for personalization and time. People just don’t want to spend a year and a half having wedding planning in the back of their minds.”

Lest you suspect this is more of a “pretrend” story, it’s corroborated by this video from the New York Times’ Vows section. The couple showed similar reasoning: “It’s fun. The second part is more practical — we didn’t want the 12 months of intense scrutiny that comes with planning a wedding.” You mean you don’t relish the thought of fighting about colors and centerpieces and linens and cake flavors for months?

I guess if you can round up all the important people in your life for any excuse other than a wedding (or a funeral), great! It’s a nice compromise between a big blow-out and an elopement. But this is an awfully flashy approach for a supposedly low-key alternative to the traditional bash, like the couple sat down and said, “I know how we’ll beat my cousin who tied the knot while parachuting into a field filled with doors!”

Just as long as couples don’t start surprising each other willy nilly. You know that’s the next step, here.