Engagement Party

We had our engagement party and it was a success (!), aside from my job totally stressing me out that day, bummer 😦 We didn’t do anything crazy or over the top. It was simple and held at our home and hosted by my parents. A few things went into the planning:
invitations, decor, food, and booze.

For invitations, I’m familiar with evite.com but didn’t like the look of the free invitation options nor the lack of tracking who opened, who rsvp’ed, adding our registry, etc. So with some research I came across Punchbowl. Super easy to use and they have an app that allowed me to easily track our guests responses. I really love the color and cocktail party theme of our invite!

For the food, there’s only one place I go… Pinterest! I looked up easy, elegant finger foods. We had about 40 guests RSVP; so we planned on 5 different finger foods. We went with Shrimp & Goat Cheese Tarts, Smoked Salmon & Cucumber, Antipasto Kabobs, Teriyaki Kielbasa & Pineapple, and Deviled Eggs along with a veggie platter, cubed cheeses and shrimp sticks (extra shrimp from the goat cheese tarts). I don’t have a link to share the kielbasa recipe, but all I did was cut it into 1-inch slices and cook in the slow cooker marinated in teriyaki for about 6 hours. Then I used toothpicks and placed a pineapple chunk and kielbasa slice on each. Let me just say, the food was a hit! And it only cost us about $125 and there was more than enough food. We then picked up 12 bottles of wine and 5 cases of beer. It all last long enough for the 3 hour party.

As for the decor, we didn’t do a whole lot. I made a sign with regular printer paper and string that read Future Mr. & Mrs. I also picked up a wooden sign that read The Best Has Yet to Come. And we bought matching paper plates and napkins.

Everyone had a great time mixing and mingling and it was nice for my family to meet Ben’s family. Now more people will know each other come our wedding day!

I love event planning, so if you have any questions or looking for ideas, just ask 🙂