My fiancé proposed to me in August 2021 at a winery in northern Virginia. Once we started planning the wedding, we quickly realized that all venues in DC were booked for 2022 due to the backlog from the pandemic. We decided to pick an early June 2023 wedding as we felt the weather would be the nicest (hopefully) and the flowers I love would be in season.

Since our engagement period is longer than we would have liked, my mom decided to throw us an engagement party! We had such a great time planning this event and it turned out so well, I thought I’d share with you in case you are looking for ideas for your own engagement party.

We chose to stick with a venue that matched the proposal location, a winery, and we chose a date exactly 364 days out from the wedding. Everyone loved that symbolism! The weather was perfect and we hope that is a good omen for next year.

It warmed our hearts to have most everyone from our families there together. Our friends and family were able to meet each other and there were some people that we hadn’t seen in a long time and it was amazing to have fun with them and catch up with a glass of wine in hand.

I have always loved Laduree ever since I studied abroad in Paris, so I chose this beautiful light green color to match their branding. It also worked very well with highlighting the natural beauty of the vineyard.

For the invitations I had the envelope lined with an image we found on the website of our venue of their grapes. On the invitation we had the light green color as the background and gold foil for the wording. We had our monogram created with our initials and encircled them with grape vines. I love that detail! We also put “364 Days and Counting” on the bottom so everyone understood the significance of the date.

We used the tables and chairs that the venue already had and we covered the tables in white tablecloths. We found light green and gold plates, which perfectly matched the invitations, and we had matching light green napkins and gold silverware.

I wanted some beautiful flower centerpieces for the tables and wow, I was beyond impressed with what the florist put together! I sent an inspiration picture and I think it turned out even better. I particularly love the peonies. The vases they gave us were also really beautiful. They balled up netted wiring at the bottom of the vase to hold the stems in place.

Our caterer did a phenomenal job as well! The food was gorgeous as well as delicious. My mom spoke with the chef and asked that we have some New Orleans inspired dishes. This is the menu he developed:

“Tip of the hat to New Orleans”

Root and marrow crudité and grazing table with dips
Oysters, shucked
Local Andouille en croute, creole, fondue
Blue crab stuffed mushrooms, lemon thyme beurre blanc
Virginia prime beef skewers, local blue cheese mornay
Pork belly pops, black garlic gastrique
Shrimp and grits
Bananas Foster cheesecake
Pecan Praline bread pudding

Everyone loved the food! The caterers were also so helpful with the setup and breakdown, we are so grateful.

We can’t forget the wine! Several months before the event we went with our parents to do a tasting to choose what would be served. We chose their Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine, their Madeleine Chardonnay, a Rosé, and their Marquis de Lafayette red wine. The wine tasted so good and everyone was having so much fun that we had to buy more wine than we initially thought we would need!

I also had custom paper cocktail napkins made from the monogram from the invitations to tie everything together.

Our parents gave a toast!

We then played the “Shoe Game.” If you haven’t heard of this before, the bride and groom sit back to back each holding a shoe from each partner. My maid of honor was kind enough to prepare questions and hosted the game for us. She asked us questions such as, “Who is more likely to walk the dog?” and we hold up the shoe of the person who fits that description. As you can see, my fiancé got really into the game, standing up for emphasis.

Our guests had a great time getting to know us better and it was really funny for them when we disagreed.

We had a table set up at the entrance to the patio with framed pictures of us from various times in our relationship, but also the professional photos from our engagement photo shoot. This was an excellent way to share a better sense our relationship.

A funny benefit of having this setup was that there was another event at the winery the same day and those guests accidentally tried to come into our event. They quickly realized they were in the wrong place once they saw that they didn’t recognize the couple in the photos haha!

Our amazing photographer moved seamlessly throughout the party capturing candid photos of our guests. We are so grateful for these photos, because we feel like we are re-living the event.

At the end of the event my fiancé and I snuck off to take some photos in the vineyard and we love how they turned out! By the way, my pearl shoes were very cute and they weren’t that expensive! I got them from Bloomingdales.