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Just weeks before their engagement party at the Boom Boom Room<\/a> in New York City, Mary Blackburn, 31, and Collin Jamieson, 30, made a few phone calls. Eleven, to be precise, inviting a select group of family and friends to be part of their secret wedding ceremony that would take place the night before their engagement celebration.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were planning our larger California wedding, and we started thinking to ourselves that we kind of want something just for us, in the city that we love,\u201d explains Blackburn (now Jamieson). \u201cWe wanted something that symbolized us<\/em>, with just our dogs and our nearest and dearest. It was very spur of the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The wedding took place on the front porch of their Mulberry Street apartment on March 7, 2025. It was where the two had fallen in love, but also where they had created a life together with their two dogs, Cabernet and Mulberry. After the vows, their small group walked across the street to Spring Lounge<\/a>\u2014the site of their first date\u2014where they toasted with their guests and, more importantly\u2026 swore them all to secrecy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had our big wedding on June 28, 2025, and the majority of our 265 guests did not know,\u201d she adds. \u201cI was given advice not to tell anyone that we\u2019re already married because it \u2018takes away the magic.\u2019 Now, thinking about it, I don\u2019t know if that was such great advice, because our day was so<\/em> magical anyway, but it was kind of fun having a little secret just between us.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mary and Collin aren\u2019t the first couple to get pre-married in secret, and they definitely won\u2019t be the last. More couples, especially Gen Zers, have been heading to City Hall before their big day or planning their own secret ceremonies in recent years. A 2025 Annual Wedding Trends Report from Pinterest<\/a> found that searches for civil ceremonies are trending\u2014massively trending, actually\u2014with searches for \u201ccity hall wedding dress\u201d up 128 percent and for \u201ccivil ceremony photography\u201d up 637 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cThere seems to be a full-on movement towards either a courthouse wedding or even an elopement of some kind,\u201d says Hannah Roze, founder of Plannerd<\/a>, an online wedding planning platform. \u201cMaybe there are really intimate details about your relationship that are just for you, rather than feeling pressured to share everything in front of people you may or may not know that well. It\u2019s about really getting back to your values: Who do you value being present, but also, who do you actually want to know<\/em> everything?\u201d<\/p>\n Intimacy was everything for Alexandria Thompson, 30, and Ashwani Srivastava, 39, who are planning to elope in Las Vegas in May 2026 before their March 2027 wedding. \u201cWe knew that on the actual wedding day we\u2019d be pulled in so many directions and wouldn\u2019t have much true quality time together,\u201d explains Thompson, who wasn\u2019t planning to tell her wedding guests, but agreed to let Vogue break their news (#SurpriseGrandma). \u201cEloping beforehand feels like a way to hold onto that original intention. Something quiet, meaningful, and grounded before the celebration becomes about everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n A pre-wedding, or civil ceremony, is intimate and private, but it\u2019s also pragmatic for many couples, some of whom are keeping their vows secret from everyone except their accountant. Which was mostly the case for Stephanie Maitre, 33, and Sam Powers, 36, when they heard from their accountant how they could save up to $15,000 by getting married before the fiscal year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had this big, expensive wedding coming up, so we thought, \u2018Why not?\u2019\u201d laughs Powers, who raves about how nice it was to have all the paperwork\u2014healthcare, insurance, etc.\u2014that comes with merging lives out of the way before their larger ceremony in March 2026 at the Ancient Spanish Monastery<\/a> (St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church) in North Miami Beach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n