Saturday 15th September 2018
The Refinery, St Andrews Square, Edinburgh
Matthew and I decided on 2020 as the year we would get married (although now 2021), which meant our engagement would be at least 2.5 years long, so we decided to celebrate with an engagement party. I absolutely loved planning this party, it was more like a mini-wedding to be honest! I made a lot of DIY decor that I sourced from eBay, including our DIY photobooth and dessert table. If you're currently on the fence about whether or not to have an engagement party... DO IT! This was, hands down, one of the best nights of my life and I love looking back at all the photos. Having all of our family and friends in one place was so special and I didn't stop smiling the entire night.
You don't have to spend a lot of money on an engagement party. We found a bar that would give us free hire with a minimum spend - the minimum was £1000 which we easily knew we'd hit with 50 guests, especially as this included the food we were providing them. Food and a welcome glass of champagne was our biggest expense but you don't have to provide this, guests don't expect it. Our photographer was found through an amateurs Facebook photography group, he only charged us £50 for 2 hours and sent us over 150 photos as he was looking to build up his portfolio. This is a brilliant way to find event photographers on a really tight budget. There are so many photos we would never have had if it wasn't for hiring Jacob!
Our cake was by Cakes by Ami and tasted divine! It was so lovely and just what we had in mind. The cake topper was from Ginger Ray. I created a dessert table around it with goodies from M&S party food, including their amazing macarons.
I knew I wanted to have a rustic vibe to match the bar and I wanted to cover the place in fairy lights. The copper wire lights we bought were so cheap from eBay and photographed so nicely. We bought hessian bunting and tried to focus on the 'love' theme , a little bit cheesy but we were there to celebrate two people in love! For table decor I collected a few jam jars and then bought roses from the supermarket the day before the party. We also bought some teeny tiny confetti balloons which looked so cute on the tables, everyone loved them and got to take them home. To display photos of us through the years we covered two cork boards in some pretty copper heart wrapping paper.
Our DIY photobooth was compromised of my digital camera, a tripod I found an amazon for £10, some artificial wisteria and balloons for the backdrop, and a few eBay photobooth props which we can reuse for the wedding. I know it's tempting to use an iPad, or guests own phones, for a DIY photobooth but a camera will give you much better quality photos and you will have all the photos straightaway.
We had our own Snapchat custom geofilter which was really fun and cost less than £5. We also had our own hashtag #PrichardWedding2020 which we plan to use for the wedding too. Oh. Wait... Maybe not anymore.
My mum helped us set up before the party. One thing I would say not to underestimate is how long it takes to set everything up!We started 2 hours before guests were due to arrive and still ran out of time!
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