When Dan and Maggie Miller invited family and friends to a New Year's Eve engagement party, guests arrived to find wedding cake in the hall and Maggie in a big white dress. "Surprise! It's our wedding!"

The couple, both busy in med school, had considered eloping to avoid all the hassle of wedding planning. "By the time I got to the point I was actually going to get married, I didn't want to deal with all that stuff," Maggie said. But since their friends would be in town for the holidays anyway, they decided to make their "elopement" a public affair -- while still keeping the wedding part a secret.

They let a few close friends and family members in on the secret, and it was Maggie's mom who insisted on the white dress. "My son had a huge church wedding," she said, "so I had a huge church wedding in my pocket and didn't need another." It sounds like Maggie should thank her brother for getting her off the hook!

For a while now, celebrities have been embracing the surprise wedding trend as a way to keep the paparazzi away from their nuptials, but more and more non-celebs are copying the idea, finding that the surprise wedding is a great way to elope without actually eloping.