Engagement parties and Bridal Teas and more, OH MY!

[trillionaire]

Hello all!

SO and I got engaged last Saturday (7/1, and of course my mom is going into wedding hyper drive already!

She knows that we want to elope, but is ignoring that reality, and my personal concession is doing all of the other cutesy frilly wedding stuff that is important to her... kind of like a trade off.

Today, she expressed wanting to do an engagement party, as well as a bridal tea of sorts, neither of which I am opposed to, but my friends live ALL over the country (MD, NC, KS/MO, CA) as I have lived in each of those states for 4 or more years! Logistically speaking, if you are not having a wedding, how do you plan events when most of the invitees would be from out of state? Because my mom would throw a party, and it would be just FI and I, and all of my parents friends... which would be, um, a little awkward. the highest volume of people would be in CA, but neither my parents, FI or I live there, and I hate asking people to travel or spend a lot of money for little ole me. Also, I thought that the people who were invited to the pre-wedding events were also supposed to be invited to the wedding?

I''m so confused! Any advice would be helpful!

 

[wannaBMrsH]

CONGRATS TRILLIONAIRE!!!!!!!!

I am having a DW and I have the same situation with friends and family all over the country. We only have a tad over 40 guests coming to the wedding, but we sent 150 invitations.

I would suggest that you have one big event that you focus all your energy on having people come in for. We thought of a huge engagement party, but due to our charity schedule, an engagement party was out for us because we had THREE formals in the weeks right after our engagement and after that we figured everyone knew and we started planning our wedding.

What I did is figure out who was hosting my shower and bachelorette and I got word out as soon as I could about them. I bought airline tickets for my mom and sister and made those my big events. I had family from out of state that wasn''t able to come for the wedding, come in for the bridal shower, and my bachelorette is next weekend and I am having several friends from my childhood town coming in for that as well.

Freke would be great to answer because she is doing an elopement of sorts as well. I know she had a HUGE engagement party.

 

[KimberlyH]

Tril, I would avoid any sort of events that leave people expecting an invitation to a wedding if you are going to elope. Instead, I would opt to have a reception of sorts, after the fact, in your home town. It could be something as lowkey as a BBQ, just a way to celebrate with friends and family.

 

[Amanda.Rx]

Congratulations!!

That is a sticky situation. Have you considered doing a small reception of sorts after the elopement that you could invite everyone to? Or, you could elope & maybe do that "live stream" so people could watch online & still feel that they are a part of your special day from home? Or you could send your close friends a video of your elopement as an annoucement after it happens...

But yeah, people probably will expect invites to a wedding if you invite them to pre-wedding activities... unless you can just tell them up front that there will be no big wedding, per say...

Hmmmm....

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Congratulations!!!!!!

I agree with the reception after you elope. Although, if you throw a big reception, you may as well have a wedding along with it. So I am not sure of the answer. I do think people from other states are unlikely to come to other than a wedding and reception unless they are super close to you.