Happy Wedding Wednesday Ya’ll!! I hope you guys are enjoying my posts so far because I am definitely having so much fun writing them! So today’s post I wanted to write about one of the first events you will be planning. An engagement party! Typically an engagement party is hosted by the bride’s parents but times are changing and there is nothing wrong with you planning your own engagement party now a days. I to this day believe in having the whole “wedding experience” from engagement parties, bridal shower and etc. My perspective is you only get to be a bride once so why not take the opportunity to celebrate this beautiful chapter in your life the most you can. But by any means, an engagement party is not required. I know it may sound intimidating just because it’s 1 of your many wedding festivities, but think about it just fun get-together for close friends and family to celebrate before the real thing.  So for any recently engaged brides, I have outlined a couple of tips that helped me during my planning.

1. Timeframe: So you just said yes! Like I mentioned in my post here take a breather and enjoy your engagement. Planning your engagement party is the perfect time to do so. I would suggest at the most to have your engagement party 3 months after you’ve gotten engaged. This gives you enough time to plan while also it’s still pretty fresh in everyone’s mind. We got engaged in October of 2016 and with the holidays right around the corner we thought it was best to have our party right after the holidays, so we had ours in January of 2017. It gave me enough time to find a location, decide who to invite, order invites and figure out all the small details.
2. Who to invite: This is a tricky one, decide on what your budget can accommodate for what you are envisioning. Are you envisioning an “I do bbq” , in a backyard setting? Or something more formal like a dinner party hosted at a restaurant/venue? Then decide what important people you want there. One of my biggest things on when we were deciding on who to invite was that this person had to be close enough to both of us that we had no doubts that they were going to be invited to the wedding. You definitely do not want to invite 300 people to the engagement party but then have a 75 – person wedding. You then give the remainder 225 engagement party guests the idea that they were to be a wedding guest too. So definitely take this into consideration as you start your guest list.
3. Gifts: Most people won’t want to show up to an event empty handed. So my fiance and I actually started a small registry at Target! (I LIVE FOR TARGET HAHA!) but this gave the people that had no idea what to gift us at least an idea and we picked “smaller” gifts so that way when we went to register for the wedding/showers then we can go scanner gun crazy as I call it.
4. What to wear: WHITE! Sorry this one was so obvious but trust me, when else can you attend an engagement party and wear white? Probably never, so take the chance to absorb this moment. Take into consideration your theme and have fun with it! I love the way Lilly Pulitzer dresses fit and their white dresses are just perfection so that’s the route I decided to go!
5. Themes: Ok this is a fun one! Pinterest galore will show the 20 million themes out there so trust me it’s so hard NOT to get overwhelmed. Here is how to narrow down your options, do you already have an idea of what you are envisioning for your wedding? Something rustic, modern, glamorous or more simple? The engagement party is the perfect opportunity to sort of give your guests a “sneak peek” to your wedding. On the other hand this is your chance to do the complete opposite, maybe you want your wedding to be a very formal event so you want the events leading to it to be more relaxed. Another factor to consider for your theme is the location and time, maybe a brunch is more up your alley so a cute “brews and bubbly” theme would fit. The ideas are endless but I think if you start with narrowing it down to 1 question, do you want it to be like your wedding or the complete opposite it will help you get started.

On a personal note, I’d love to share a couple of detail shots of our engagement party! We held it a local tex-mex restaurant in Houston and had it around lunch time. My fiance and I had a great time and it was just so much fun to have our first wedding event right as the new year started.

I’d love to hear from any brides that did have an engagement party, what was your favorite memory of it? Til next time!