We had our engagement party back in April. I drafted this on my substack but I thought I might as well put it on here too!
This is the post to share my thoughts, feelings, reflections and memories of it all.
We got engaged in August last year so it has taken us about 8 months to have our engagement party. We weren’t in a rush to have a party straight away and in between then, life was busy. We went to Canada, Max started a new job, Christmas/NY break, my birthday etc happened. We finally sat down after the new year and talked about our goals which included organising our engagement party.
We both wanted it to be local and have a casual vibe. Once we had an idea of what we wanted, we thought about possible venues and wrote down our guest list. I think I emailed 5 venues and we chose one from that list. Most of them were reasonable and what we expected. Except for one venue that had a $7500 minimum spend and it wasn’t for the whole venue too. WTF. That was an instant no.
Where we ended up choosing was where I thought our party would be for multiple reasons. After we locked that in, we told people that we wanted to invite and for a few weeks I yo-yo’d if I wanted to decorate the place. Max and I had a drink at our venue to scope it out a few weeks beforehand and initially I thought we didn’t need decorations. However, after sleeping on it, I had a change of heart and I told Max that I wanted some decorations. He was down with whatever I wanted to do.
I’ve never planned an engagement party or even a party of this type, style and size before so this is all new. Max has also not done anything like this before so it was new to us.
I thought planning this party was pretty easy and stress-free. It wasn’t until I started having dreams about our party that gave me some stress and anxiety. I literally had 3 dreams in one week of things that went wrong at our party. One involved Max and I not talking to each other in our party, second one was the venue had back to back parties so we didn’t have enough time to decorate and in the end, I wasn’t ready on time and had to go home to put jewellery on and the last one was about the flowers being wrong. I didn’t know if my anxiety was manifesting through my subconscious or did my dreams causing me anxiety. Either way, that was really the only stressful part during this time.
The week leading up to our party was where most of the prep happened. My sister helped with printing our signs, she also made the cake (more on this later), I bought a bunch of flowers as I wanted to put them together in small bud vases and then Max picked up the balloons from Spotlight on the day of our party.
As for my prep on the day, I got my makeup done at Mecca Ponsonby and I used my L3 Beauty Loop makeup application so it was free. I wanted natural makeup anyway and just wanted a good base as I could top up my eyes or cheeks or change my lip if I wanted to anyway. I did my own hair before I went to my appt. Then I stopped by Daily Bread for matcha and lunch before heading home. Max was picking up our balloons during this time.
I ended up choosing this dress I got on sale from Flo & Frankie. I had a few options but I opted for this because it was flowy and so comfy. I could eat, drink and it has pockets!
Decor
As I mentioned above, we didn’t have too much decor but I wanted to ‘zhuzh up’ the place and make it more personal to us. It is our party after all. It only took 20ish mins to decorate our venue so we had time to go back home, change and be ready for our party.
I made signage from Canva and it matched our invites. Then I made a bunch of flower arrangements.
I love having fresh flowers in the house so I wanted have some in our party. I also know flowers can be expensive. My idea was to just have a bunch of small flower bud vases on tables so the tables aren’t plain. I ended up buying a lot that I managed to create a big bouquet in the vase on the left. I bought the flowers from the supermarket and the flower wholesale place locally and I just put them together the night before. I think I spent $130 on the flowers and I think they turned out well.
This was the bigger vase the next day:
I loved how this turned out and this was the leftovers from the bud vases!
As for the rest, we had this lit up sign from Kmart and Max placed the balloons on each side. We had some heart string decor that my parents placed around the place and the last one was our camera bowl. We didn’t want to get a photographer for our party but I had an idea of putting our cameras together and letting our guests take some photos. I did buy the Instax Evo polaroid camera for this (we can use it for the wedding too) but the rest I already had. I had my mini Charmera, my digicam and a film camera in the bowl and I’m glad our guests used them!
The only other thing I prepared and brought to the venue were these toilet baskets we put in the women’s and men’s toilets for our guests to use.
I had this idea from one of Max’s work events. One Christmas party had this toilet basket in the women’s loo and it was so handy to see mints, hair ties, painkillers etc in there and I kept this in the back of my mind. Most of the stuff I already had especially for the women’s so I just put it together in these baskets. I got a few comments about these so I think they’re a win! Not everything was used but I just wanted to make sure that if anyone needed anything, they could find it there.
I think the important ones (good to note for our wedding too) were: mints, hand cream, deodorant, painkillers and perfume mist/spray. I also had feminine products, tide stain remover pen, lint roller, bobby pins and hair ties, dry shampoo, makeup setting spray and face blotting sheets just in case. I really enjoyed putting these together especially the women’s basket and I think it was appreciated so that was good.
I couldn’t fill up the men’s but I had a deodorant spray, mints, painkillers, sanitiser, wet wipes in their one.
Party
Overall I think our party was a success. When Max and I debriefed at the end of it, we were pretty happy and I think our guests were too. Well we hoped so anyway but at the end of the day, the people who were close to us showed up and wanted to celebrate with us which was amazing.
The only photo of us two from our party haha
Max had a short speech and he noted in his that both of us aren’t good at celebrating like this, we’re not one to throw a party and that’s true. I had a birthday dinner for my 30th and that was the biggest get together I’ve organised. We both haven’t had a party to celebrate just ourselves – individually or together so this was new experience for us and it was lovely.
We were touched by those who made time and effort to come to our party. We had it locally so it was close to us but far from other people but they still came. My friend Kendel came with her newborn baby from Whāngarei which was amazing. Some of mine I haven’t caught up in a while and they came. We felt very grateful and lucky by the end of it.
Both of families haven’t seen our friends in one place either especially on Max’s side. His mum finally got to meet his friends that he’s talked about for years.
Overall we had a pretty casual, laid back vibe. I didn’t end up drinking a lot. I had one cocktail and I didn’t feel like drinking any more after that. I wanted to last the whole night and if I drank more alcohol, I would’ve been tired and sleepy to last long. I’m happy with how I was and I was not hungover the day after.
If there was something I would change, I wish I ate more. There was a lot of socialising and greeting people and I barely ate. We could’ve ordered more food. My parents ate a lot but depending on what time people arrived, the different waves of food we ordered to come might’ve passed them.
Oh, I also thought I should’ve checked if our playlist was on shuffle. Towards the end of the night, I realised that maybe it wasn’t but it’s okay. I just noticed BTS songs played right after each other so it wasn’t shuffled haha.
I also wish I made sure to take photos with friends but this was hard to remember in the moment. I barely touched my phone and I barely had any photos during our party. This is a good sign but it became a blur during it as we tried to talk to everyone there.
Besides those, we had a good time and we felt loved and celebrated which is what it was about.
The cake
Maybe the best part of our party was our cake. My sister who went to pastry school, worked at a chocolate place but is now a corporate girly made our cake. I wanted chocolate and simple design but OMG she delivered.
It was a tall cake with layers of ganache and it was absolutely AMAZING. There were no leftovers because everyone loved it. Max’s niece wanted a third slice, she loved it so much and we’ve had messages the day after saying it’s the best cake they’ve ever had and that they’ll be thinking about this cake for a while.
We’re quite pleased Joan’s cake she made for us was amazing and that we actually got to eat it. The most I ate that night was our cake. I barely touched the food but I was not missing out on this cake.
Final thoughts
We really enjoyed our party and we thought it was a success. It was great having the people close to us in one place to celebrate. It’s such a nice feeling that people made the effort to come and those who did were genuinely happy for us.
Not everyone that we invited we’re able to come and we knew that and that’s okay. Some were overseas and sadly couldn’t be there. What surprised me were some that I invited didn’t end up replying if they could make it or they said they would and then I realised they didn’t come. Oh well people have reasons but the ones that really mattered to us such as family and close friends were there.
Something like this has made me and both Max and I reflect on a lot of things. We’ve come a long way and we feel so lucky. We’re lucky to have found each other but also lucky that we’ve got people around us that support us and are happy for us for this next stage of our lives. I think they can see that we’ve grown as people and we’re happy together.
I have never been the little girl that has dreamed about her wedding day. I was not one of those that had getting engaged, getting married etc as a life goal. It was great if those happened but I wasn’t living my life just to achieve that. Getting proposed to and getting married were not the end goal for me but it’s turned out to be an added bonus. I’m so glad we found each other and we’ve chosen each other. Our engagement party was to celebrate all of this and I’m glad we did it. ❤️
A Style Collector 