A Bride's Story: Our Engagement Party!

Written by . Posted in Marineh's Story

A few months ago, Shant and I had an engagement party to celebrate with our close family our official engagement. Our most important goal for the party was to allow our 2 families to meet and get to know each other. While Shant’s and my parents had met a few times in the past, our extended families had not met and we really wanted our 2 families to have a chance to interact with each other before the wedding.

Shant & I selected Hotel Casa Del Mar as our location for the engagement party. See my previous blog post for more details on why we picked Casa Del Mar.

Our Engagement Party!


I chose Tic-Tock Couture Florals to do all the centerpieces and engagement flowers.  I knew I could trust Eddie so I told him what color scheme I wanted, and I was pleasantly surprised on my engagement day when I walked in and saw the beautiful centerpieces!

Our Engagement Party!


My beautiful bridal party – I’m so lucky to have such amazing friends who share my joy!
 

Our Engagement Party!


One of the Armenian traditions of an engagement party is to have the groom’s family enter the hall (or house) with flowers, a bottle of cognac, and a box of chocolates. Eddie from Tic-Tock Florals helped arrange everything, which made it extremely convenient to have one florist handle everything , including the centerpieces , the floral arrangements and even decorating the “gift table”.

The families then circle the soon to be bride & groom and dance around us. The entrance and the initial dancing was my favorite part of the engagement!

Our Engagement Party!


To help facilitate the interaction between the 2 families, I decided to make name tags for everyone. I bought the name tags from Michaels and wrote down the name and the relation to either the bride or groom (mother, uncle, cousin, etc). I also bought pink & blue stickers from Michaels and added a pink sticker to everyone on my side, and a blue sticker to everyone on Shant’s side.

Here’s a picture of Shant & I with my grandpa!  The nametags read – Bride – Grandpa – Groom!

Our Engagement Party!


Heartbeat DJ was fantastic! He truly is an entertainer! He not only played a great variety of music, but he added a lot of small touches that made a big difference!  Although all good DJs do a great job playing good music to keep everyone dancing, truly exceptional DJs can fulfill the duties of being a Master of Ceremony (MC) for your event and entertaining your guests, and Heatbeat DJ did exactly that!

Our Engagement Party!


One of the best traditions about Armenian engagements is that the primary gift is jewelry for the bride! I received a lot of beautiful necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.

Our Engagement Party!


My parents gave Shant a watch so he didn’t feel too left out! If you're looking for a place to buy nice watches from, I recommend Dejaun Jewelers. They have a great selection of fine watches and jewelry.

Our Engagement Party!


After the gift giving ceremony and the toast, we all sat down to eat. The food at Casa Del Mar was amazing. Their salmon was off the charts, and their molten chocolate cake dessert was finger licking good!

Our Engagement Party!


After lunch, we danced a whole lot!

Our Engagement Party!


I got my hair done by Edward Jacob. I showed him a small picture of a style I liked and he did a great job  with my hair.  Linh Tran did my makeup. Both did a fabulous job and I got lots of compliments!

Our Engagement Party!


At the end of the day, my brother Garen took some photos of just Shant & I in the outside deck area at Casa Del Mar. These are some of my favorite pictures of Shant & I. Special thanks to Garen for taking such amazing photos of the entire event. Every picture in this blog is taken by Garen.

Our Engagement Party!


Our Engagement Party!


We had such an amazing time at our engagement! We really enjoyed every minute of the event. Everyone had a great time and there was a lot of mingling between the families. We all enjoyed the great music, the great food, and best of all, the great company! The engagement party was a perfect preview of how much fun we were all going to have at the upcoming wedding!!!

I can’t wait…

Tags: bride's story , engagement

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