Your Engagement Party
Your engagement party is the first big party you will throw to celebrate your move towards marriage. Send out invitations to your engagement party at least two weeks in advance so that people will have time to RSVP and you will have a head count for your party. There are a myriad of ideas on styles for your engagement party that you can find online or when you flip through one of the many wedding etiquette books at your local bookstore. You can also look in magazines or recreate what your parents may have done for their engagement party some thirty years ago.
Your engagement party can be may be very small held at your families house or large and will require a banquet hall and catering service that specializes in engagement parties. While at your engagement party you could open the night with a game to see who knows the most about the bride and groom. You may be able to find free templates online for easy games. Following the games at your engagement party you will want to serve dinner and cake. After that you may offer up gifts to your new in-laws and they may do the same to get the whole wedding planning process off to a happy start. A great gift idea to give to a mom at the engagement party is a wedding planner with specific protocol for mother of the bride. At the engagement party is a great time to go over everyone’s role in the wedding planning process.
Some great ideas for a theme for your wedding party may be what the families have in common. Does everyone like tennis? Have the party at a tennis club to get the conversation between fathers started. Are your mother’s both bakers? Turn your banquet room you have rented for the engagement party into a cooking class by renting an instructor to teach the family how to make a great dessert. Does everyone like old movies? Have a screen and projector play Grace Kelley’s old movies for engagement party entertainment and decorate the engagement party hall with old posters.
Your engagement party may be simple or elaborate. You may decide your engagement party will be announced in the letter announcing your engagement or a surprise meeting of families. You can follow etiquette and tradition and have it at your home or throw tradition to the wall and go to a Mexican restaurant. Whatever you plan keep your wedding engagement party about you and your new beau, get the families together and prepare for your new lives.
