Engagement party

The engagement party is typically thrown by someone other than the couple. It’s considered rude to throw a party honoring yourself. They usually take place within 2-3 months of the proposal. Anyone can be invited, but they should also be guests you plan to invite to the wedding.

My fiance and I planned and hosted our own engagement party! We held it a month and a half after we got engaged. We did it specifically for our friends since our friends live all over the country, and we wanted to be able to get everyone together for a night of celebrating with us. Plus, we got engaged in December, so we had already seen our families after the engagement because of the holidays. We kept things pretty casual, just asked a brewery/winery in the area if we could reserve a big table and a couple of couches for a few hours on a Saturday. They let us do that for free, and they let us decorate, so we got balloons, table runners, and little glass jars with artificial greens in them. We also paid for everyone's first drink, and we set up a box for song requests for the wedding. My mom made a TON of appetizers, and we bought cupcakes for dessert. We set up a Facebook event instead of sending individual invitations since we were keeping it casual. Overall, we had about 20 people and spent $350 for everything (definitely could have spent less if we didn't pay for drinks). It was a lot of fun! We even went out drinking at a couple other bars after.


Moral of the story: If you want an engagement party, don't worry about following tradition and not hosting one for yourselves! Our friends liked the opportunity to get together and celebrate our engagement since we don't all see each other that frequently with everyone living far apart. And you can make it as formal or casual as you want!

This is what it looked like once it was all set up before our guests arrived:

View Quoted Comment Omg thank you! This was so helpful. You situation is very similar to our. We got engaged on Christmas and got to celebrate with family but would love to get together with friends to celebrate! Thank you do the information. We truly want to make this engagement a time for things that matter to us. And following the traditional avenue is not always are thing 😊

View Quoted Comment No problem! I've found that it has been really helpful throughout all of my wedding planning to answer the question, "Do I actually want to do this a certain way, or am I just doing it because that's how it's 'supposed' to be done or because so-and-so told me I should do it like this?" In the end, all of this is for you and your fiance, so don't worry about doing what's "right" or what others want because it's really all about what the two of you want!