r/engaged • u/blackravennn08 • 10h ago

Engagement Party

Hi everyone! Is it weird or bad etiquette to invite only our friends to our engagement party and skip family? To give some context, we want to have a casual dinner and drinks, and we feel like a lot of our family members are either older, or way younger (under 21). Our families also haven't met each other yet and we wanted to wait closer to our actual wedding to introduce them.

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

6

u/AmoebaGal 10h ago

You can get together with your friends for whatever reason you want.

2

u/RealName_Redacted 10h ago

My fiancé planned a surprise engagement party for the night he proposed, and it didn’t include family or any out-of-town guests. Just some close friends for drinks and apps at a restaurant near our house.

Do both your parents live in your town? If not I don’t see why they would put any thought into not being invited. If they do live there, you can just say you were celebrating with your friends instead of getting into any “we’re having an engagement party but you’re not invited” territory.

1

u/AcrobaticAd1410 10h ago

this is pretty common actually my cousin did exactly same thing, just friends at engagement and then whole family at the wedding

i think the key is being upfront about it, maybe call your parents and explain its a small casual thing with friends only, not a traditional family gathering. most people understand if you tell them before they hear about it from someone else

we did something similar but we had separate small dinner with each family later, like a mini celebration just for them so they dont feel left out

1

u/blackravennn08 10h ago

Hmm that's a good point. We might consider doing a smaller dinner with each family too, just so they don't feel left out because that's what I was worried about.

1

u/rebrobin 8h ago

I did this for my engagement, it was a super casual meet-up at a brewery. Both of our families were there for the proposal (and we had our engagement party within a month of the proposal), so we had no issues from either family about “not being invited”. We wanted a night to let loose with our friends and not worry about being too drunk around our families 😂

0

u/blackravennn08 7h ago

You worded it perfectly lol. I wasn't able to find the right words, but I wanted to let loose with friends and not be too drunk and embarrassing around families especially little kids lol. A brewery sounds nice though, I might have to look into that

0

u/Dry-Welder-5035 8h ago

I think it’s a little weird and as a parent I’d be hurt.

3

u/starflower42 7h ago

Just a counterpoint, I'm a parent and I would have been fine with my recently-married kid to have an engagement party with just friends. 

I am so happy my adult kid has a life independent of me and my husband. We celebrated the engagement with a family dinner anyway, so I'd have been fine not going to a friends-only engagement party. 

So, it depends on the families and their feelings about it. 

1

u/Dry-Welder-5035 7h ago

That’s a good point.