Why have an engagement party? Well for us it was a pretty simple answer. We love nothing more than gathering people together, and we’ll take any excuse to catch up with the ones we love. If you put all your energy into the one-big-day, you might miss all the little things along the way during the planning process. So why not make it about more than just the one day? We took a trip to Melbourne to spend time with some of the people in our bridal party, and they were able to meet each other for the first time. If you’ve seen some of our other blog posts in our series on planning a wedding, you might have also read about the workshop we took at KIN Gallery to make each other’s wedding rings. It’s those little moments that make planning a wedding all worthwhile: seeing a friend cuddle another friend’s baby for the first time at your engagement party, introducing your closest friends to each other over drinks on the Yarra river, or publicly acknowledging all the people who have helped you become who you are today.

A big thank you goes out to Ashleigh from Silque Photography for photographing our favourite people. It’s a small world when the old next door neighbour at your parent’s house becomes a fellow Canberra wedding photographer and friend!

We had the pleasure of inviting Stef and Travis from Woodbrook to cater for our engagement party. After seeing them successfully cook for 160 guests at their own wedding, we knew we could trust them to put on a delicious feast for us!

Forty Two Cakes made us a special cake for the occasion. With their help we decided on a seminaked mulled wine pear cake with mulled wine Swiss meringue buttercream, and spiced pumpkin cake with maple cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. They dressed it up with gold-painted dark chocolate ganache drip, torched meringue, blueberries and mulled wine poached pears.