Intimate Destination Wedding Wording

Hello all!
My fiancé and I are planning what’s basically an intimate destination wedding. We’re flying to California and will mostly likely only take our parents. I have a ton of family and while I dearly love them, we’re not planning any type of festivities. We have an all day session booked with our photographer so we’ll basically have our moms there for moral support getting ready, and adad to marry us and then we’ll go off with our photographers and they’ll head back to the cabin. We’re not opposed to any family who want to take on the expense/trouble of flying out and coming, we just don’t want them to expect to see anything other than a short ceremony. We’re going for a low stress day that’s just about us spending time together.

We’re trying to decide between just sending announcements after, or sending some type of “Hey we’re going here on this date to get married!” in advance just so people don’t think we’re trying to hide it 🤦🏼‍♀️ Any advice on which way to go, or has anyone done something similar?
Also... we don’t feel like we should register anywhere but the couple of people who know our plans have asked us where we’re registered. Is that a thing if you’re not inviting people to the wedding?