Hi everyone,
This is a little long so bear with me.
First, I adore my fiance and absolutely want to celebrate this milestone (our engagement) as we've been together for almost 7 years and have grown SO much since we started dating. He proposed on Christmas 2021, it was everything I wanted out of such a moment. Unfortunately, something about the proposal sent my mom into a tailspin resulting in the worst fight we have ever had. I cried myself to sleep that night. Not the way I wanted to spend my first evening engaged. This blowout with my mom kind of put the idea of hosting an engagement party out of our minds.
Fast forward to a few months ago, two of my very good friends knew about the fight and wanted to offer to plan an engagement party to make up for the less-than-perfect beginning to our engagement night. We picked a date and the invites were sent. I was happy to let my friends run with their theme/decor/food/drink ideas. Unfortunately, one of the friends who was helping to plan lost her brother very suddenly right after confirming the party details, and the other friend was suddenly asked to travel for work for an undetermined amount of time.
We completely understand that our friends' lives and careers are more important than an engagement party so we took over the planning. My sister even offered to host at her house as our apartment (800 sq ft) is way too small for 50 people. Things we going fine. Both our families and friends were happy to celebrate with us. Suddenly though, my mom and his mom were having dinner when his mom expressed hurt at not being invited. This was weird to me as we made it very clear that everyone was included and even asked if she wanted to be involved in the planning ( she did not). We smoothed things over, but I was a little hurt that she thought even for a moment that she and my fiances family might not be included in the celebration. Especially because I love them and have made a point to include them whenever possible and would never consider leaving them out.
Fast forward again to yesterday morning. I found out that my sister's oldest son has covid, meaning that the party can no longer be at her house. To top it off, she got very angry when asked about the party (something I shouldn't have done and regret now). Because we have many friends coming from out of town and summer weekends tend to get booked up very quickly, we decided that postponing isn't an option and instead will host at our apartment. We thought that with our backyard space and a mild forecast for the day of the party, we could make it work.... or so we thought.
This morning I glanced at the forecast again for the day of the party. It's supposed to rain... HARD. On top of that, we live in an area that's relatively isolated and just found out that one of two tunnels to our neighborhood will be closed on the day of the party, making travel to and from our home more complicated than usual.
So, with everything that's happened, is this party cursed? Should we cancel? Should we call an exorcist? Should we run away and elope? (engagement parties, weddings, feelings to manage to be damned?). This whole process has been unexpectedly stressful and it's only the engagement party!
Any advice or words of encouragement are welcome.
Thanks in advance!
- A very confused engagement party planner