Engagement party planning is the fun bit before all the stress comes. Its the perfect excuse to get your nearest and dearest together and celebrate your up coming nuptials.
I also know many people who have decided against having them as they haven't wanted one, or they are getting married quicker. As we had decided to wait two years in order to save for the wedding and a house, we wanted to celebrate!
The venue is the big decider for this, as it will be what costs the money if anything.
We decided to have ours where we first met, given that we got engaged abroad, we couldn't really have it where he popped the question!
Luckily for us, the place we first met is just up the road from where we live, and is one of our local pubs.
They have a lovely function room out the back of the pub that also has access to the garden (of which a section was also reserved for us)
The function room was also free, which was a massive bonus, especially when you are saving for the wedding and in our case a house too. I would definitely recommend trying to find somewhere cheap or free if you can. If you don't have any pubs nearby that offer this, try village halls or even church halls.
We also decided against food, to keep the costs down, which I slightly regret as I was starving as I couldn't eat before hand as was too nervous!
However, the pub serves really nice bar food, (the cajun fries are to die for!) so people had the option to either eat before they came, or to order something once they arrived so I didn't feel bad on them - you have to think of money unfortunately. If you are lucky enough to have budget for food too, then obviously crack on, but we didn't, and no one minded.
If you are local to Tunbridge Wells, you will probably have heard of St John's Yard. If not, and you live close by I would definitely recommend it for functions (I also had my 30th birthday party there) but also if you just want a drink with friends. On Sunday's they also do a burger deal where they have a selection of burgers half price and they are a-m-a-z-i-n-g!
They have also recently opened another restaurant next door to them, The Shuffle House, which serves pizza and tapas, with a bar upstairs that has shuffle boards that you can hire to play on. I believe they can also do functions here.
I love St John's Yard as the atmosphere is always great, the decor is quirky, the staff are friendly, and the garden is lovely especially in the summer, but also has heaters in the colder months.
The room is decorated really well with cute bunting and fairy lights hanging up as well as the quirky pub decor already, so we only added some balloons and a board of pictures with fairy lights that I made up the week before. This meant minimal effort from us, meaning we could enjoy the day without rushing around to decorate and didn't have to worry about clearing the decorations before we left that night or go back the next day.
Everyone commented on how lovely the function room was, even if we were a bit squished in. This was mainly due to the fact we presumed a lot of people wouldn't be able to make it and then were blown away with the turn out!
We were so surprised with the turn out and it gave us an insight of what the wedding day would be like as we spent the whole night saying hello to people and thanking for them for coming before we'd have to move on to the next person.
It was very overwhelming, as well as a lot of fun, but we barely saw each other. So we have made the decision to ensure that on our wedding day, we schedule time out of the day for just us. It's our wedding day, and yes, we want to spend the day celebrating with our family and friends, but we also want to be able to celebrate together.
Much Love as always,
237 days and counting... 🧡💒💜
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