Engagement Party - El Cheapo

eunja

Well!

My beloved got down on his knees and begged me to marry him a couple of weeks ago and we are in the throes of organising an engagement party for approx 40 people, mainly workmates and friends (ages vary from 20 - 40 odd and all fairly laid back)

We want to throw a fairly large bash as we aren't planning on getting wed for a couple of years, and then we are going abroad with just parents so I want lots of attention NOW NOW NOW!!

We are going to a local pub with outside seating area and I was wondering if any of you could help with teh following.

1. Haggling prices down at pub for finger food and booze (£300 budget for 40 people - is this reasonable? would obviously like to reduce this amount!)
2. Cheap ways of decorating
3. Cheap entertainment ideas - at my birthday I did fun but not filfthy dares and if any of you have any ideas to add to my list of ''hilarious'' dares such as licking people's ankles or any other suggestions I would be much obliged.

Many thanks my learned friends!!!

Rachie_B

why not just have a garden party maybe with gazebos and BBQ etc?

if you know someone with a large garden ,just borrow as much garden furniture as poss and a few gazebos in case of rain

get help with making / providing the buffet or just have a BBQ

i dont think "dares" and the like are suitable for an engagement party but whatever floats ya boat lol

or even cheaper dont have one at all lol

was_3

Hi

First of all congratulations!

We've just been through the same, got engaged in Feb and had our Engagement Party in May. and I'm pleased to say it was hughe success.

We did manage to keep the party to a tight budget, as we're also saving for the wedding in a couple of years and also a house!

The Tips we did are as follows.

1, Venue - quite important, luckely we found the local church hall which was only £50 quid for the evening, and also had a licenced bar. (barman charged £35). This was good in the fact that they let us do what we wanted with the place, plenty of parking outside!, and we had the run of the place for the whole day.

2, Catering, we considered when looking around at venues about having them cater for us, but as it's a evening party we decided (with a little bit of persuading of the mothers!) that we should do the food ourselves, finger snacks etc all available from iceland etc! and saved a lot of money too.

3,) Disco - well this one was more down to having a mate who runs his own disco, and we booked him with the full intention of paying normal rate for his services. but when the evening came, he wouldn't accept any money, said it was an engagement pressie. (although we've said we'll treat him to a meal at some stage!)

4,) Decorations - with the hall left to our own creation we decided to have a colour scheme of blue and silver, which worked well, we got ballons (blue and silver) from a £1 shop and then got a "party pack ballon pack" from asda which containes helium gas to blow them up! was worth the £20 (39.99 if Clintons!) this also comes with balloons but we decided to stick to the colour scheme!

Had a personalised banner made relativly cheeply (search the web and ebay for best offers!)

we also got some light up balls (for want of a better expression!) from bwise which change colour, they are battery operated and we put two of these on each table, and they turned into a real talking point, and looked fantastic!

Also because we did it in the hall, we were able to take our own drinks in as well as having the bar! this saved money on those who wanted soft drinks etc.

You can of course cut corners on many things, but make sure it is what you both want.

I've also done a couple of parties in a function room of the pub, and they've let us decorate as we need, and put our own food out.

All the best, and let us know how it goes!

(Not bad for my first post!)