I was afraid of this for my moms surprise party, so we told her that I was taking her and my dad somewhere as a surprise. But when we got there, surprise! Everyone else was there. Except my granny, I forgot to pick her up (eternal guilt).
Could you maybe fib, and tell her you'd secretly planned a dinner, mani/pedi, whatever as a surprise, but since she's hurt, you're telling her now? And then she'd still have a surprise if a full blown party
When we hosted a big surprise party for my mom's 60th, the cover was that we had reservations for a nice birthday dinner. That also made sure that she looked nice, since she would have been upset to see so many old friends and not have thought about what to wear or done her hair or whatever. Then on the way to 'dinner' we stopped by a friend's house for a made up reason, and that's where the party was. We still laugh about how she was really annoyed that we were running late for our pretend reservation.
BFP #1 9/2010 (lost our baby at 21 weeks)
BFP #2 8/2011 (ectopic pregnancy)
BFP #3 10/2011 (chemical pregnancy)
BFP #4 12/2011 (Abigail born 8/15/12)
BFP #5 5/2013 (Griffin born 1/23/14 with heart defects, now repaired!)
Re: WWF14D Surprise Party and Hurt Feelings