Hello. I have a friend group with my husband, us and four other couples. Our kids met through swimming together and we’ve stayed friends. One of the husbands wanted to do a surprise birthday for his partner, so we were all meeting at midday, he had booked a hotel for overnight for everybody. When we got to the meeting point and got out the car ,we saw him and his partner dressed in their finest, her with a wedding dress, and all the other couples dressed up, hair done, makeup looking amazing. It was a surprise wedding (we realised we were outside the church for the meeting point). We were dressed for the mountains in really scruffy gear and they were all laughing saying “surprise” and I said to them “wow, nobody thought to tell us there would be a surprise at least and to dress up, look nice”? They were all, oh it doesn’t matter yadda yadda and herded us into the church for the small civil ceremony. It the became apparent each one of the other couples had some significant part to play, bridesmaid, best man, witness, ring bearer, whilst we sat there like spare parts and I could feel myself welling up. Afterwards they did photos outside and forced us to stand there with them all beaming looking amazing. Then we had to drive 2 hours to the overnight location, and I was having a hard time processing this surprise weddings and the fact it was only my husband and I not included in all the planning and arrangements. They stopped for more photos at amazing view point and by this time the tears were welling up. They could see I was upset and were trying to cajole me, saying it doesn’t matter , the most important is that you are here with us, but it didn’t feel like that at all. The overnight stay was just me forcing myself to put on a face and quite frankly it was torture. At least one of the other girls has the decency to say, she would not have liked it either, and if it was her, she would have cried immediately and gone home. We are now just home, and to be honest I don’t want to be in their company any time soon. I’m just really hurt they would leave us out, and think that was a good surprise, it felt like a bad joke, and we were the butt of it. The atmosphere was strained and although I didn’t want to be the one having a downer on their special day, I just could not get my head around it