So you’ve started planning your engagement party and you have all the basics sorted, BUT you want to make it all a little more ‘you.’ This is YOUR engagement party, after all. I totally get it.

For me, personalisation was the most important thing when it came to our engagement party, so I’m going to take you through everything I did to create a truly personalised event that really tells YOUR love story.

I’m Nazlee, the Director of Offley Place, an award-winning wedding venue where we’ve had the pleasure of hosting countless beautiful weddings over the years.

Having recently tied the knot myself, I’m excited to share insider tips and tricks from both sides of the aisle to help you craft the perfect curated wedding. You can find me on YouTube and Instagram for even more wedding prep tips.

Your engagement party is such a big celebration, it’s the first one of your wedding planning journey. Today, we’re exploring some really creative ways to make it all a lot more personalised to you and your love story. 

Let’s get right into it.

Photographs as Decor

When it comes to decor, there are so many things to consider in order to curate the perfect vibe for your event. Regardless of the aesthetic you’re going for, photos of your relationship are a perfect addition. 

Displaying photos of your journey together - anything from your first date to your proposal - is going to evoke so many fond memories and create such a warm and intimate atmosphere.

If you’ve had an engagement photoshoot or any photos taken at your actual proposal, you can use these photos as your decor, as they’ll have been taken at a time where you were both so excited, capturing a truly special moment.

How to use your engagement photos as decor:

You can use your engagement and relationship photos in a variety of ways. I love the idea of setting up a photo wall with a collage of memorable moments, using framed pictures as centrepieces on your tables, or stringing them along fairy lights for a fun, whimsical effect.

For our wedding, we used an antique free standing mirror that we got our names vinyl-lettered on top of. We stuck on a selection of photos of us throughout our journey and from our engagement shoot all over it. It was so special and everyone really loved reliving moments of our journey.

You might also want to consider incorporating photos of family and friends who have been a part of your journey, sharing your celebration with your wider group of loved ones.

Using photos as decor turns your engagement party into a visual narrative of your love story, making it such a special occasion that truly represents the next chapter of your lives.

Proposal Reactions

This next idea is one that you may or may not be able to recreate depending on how you announced your proposal (sorry if you missed out!). 

Because me and my partner have so many friends and family living all over the world, we actually announced our engagement via video call and I screen-recorded each person’s reaction.

When we were thinking of personal elements for the engagement party, I decided that I really wanted those clips to be a part of it, as they were just so special to me. We bought a digital frame, edited the reaction videos all back-to-back so that it would flow really seamlessly, and positioned the frame on the bar at our engagement party. It was so special and really brought the family excitement of the actual moment as part of the event.

Our guests really loved it and the friends and family involved were so surprised to see themselves there too! It was also lovely because we had some friends and family who weren't able to come to the UK for our engagement party, so they were still part of the celebration and their presence was really felt.

This is a great idea because it doubles as decor and guest entertainment – what more could you want?

Custom Cocktails with a Personal Touch

Who doesn't love a delicious cocktail at a party? In my opinion it’s the best way to elevate your celebration beyond standard drinks. We created a cocktail list based on our favourite tipples, making sure that there were some non-alcoholic options too of course.

Design a menu that reflects your personalities and tastes with your favourite signature drinks.

At our engagement party we even took it a step further by giving them fun names related to us and our love story. These little touches were a huge hit with our guests, and a really simple way to inject some fun and personalisation into the celebration.

Expert Tip: Don't be afraid to delegate. I'm not the best at coming up with catchy names, so I enlisted the help of my brother - who loved the task. Remember, you don't have to do everything yourself. Once you have a general idea, delegate tasks to free yourself up.

Creating personalised cocktails with unique names is a brilliant way to add a fun and bespoke twist to your engagement party.

Get creative!

You could name them after your first date location, a shared hobby, or even incorporate your names for a simple touch.

Display your menu on the bar in style. I designed ours on Canva, including little sketches of each drink, and framed it for easy viewing.

These custom cocktails will not only add a touch of flair but also spark conversation among your guests.

Fusion of Cultures

Now this won't be applicable to everyone, but one thing we did to really personalise our engagement party was to focus on creating a fusion between our two cultures. 

I'm Iranian and my husband is Swedish - two very different cultures but with so much that we love from each of them. Bringing our cultures into the mix was important for our engagement party and these are a few ways that we did it.

• We organised a saxophonist to play throughout the evening which was great because live music can be so much more fun and flexible. Our sax player had learnt some Persian and some Swedish songs for our guests to enjoy and the mix between the two was really fun and really surprised everyone! 
• We also included some Swedish congratulations banners and balloons that we'd picked up on our last trip to Sweden. These added another celebratory touch! 
• As tea is such a big thing in Iranian culture – we drink it all the time, and a lot of it too – we decided to go for a big, lavish, Persian tea bar which was so much fun. Guests could go up any time and choose from a selection of teas that were all brewed and ready! I've had so many compliments about this tea bar that was really something different but worked perfectly for the relaxed, elevated feel of our evening.

Ultimately, including a fusion of different cultures is such a beautiful element that is deeply personalised without you having to actually spell it out. That's what makes this one of my favourite ways of making your event that little more unique.

Personalise Your Menu

Your engagement party menu is another opportunity to personalise your celebration. Consider including dishes that reflect your personal or cultural backgrounds (again – another place where you can bring your culture though!).

My husband and I are both big foodies, we love trying lots of different things. Because we wanted more of a relaxed feel for our engagement party we went for bowl food that would be circulated around for our guests, so that they would spend more time walking around and mingling than sitting down, a heavy, formal 3 course meal just wasn’t the feel we wanted.

My husband also loves Iranian food, so we chose an Iranian caterer to work with and it was a really special touch. Our Iranian guests loved seeing our traditional foods presented in a modern, bite-sized way and our non-Iranian guests got to try some of our favourite dishes. 

This was just another little way to bring in an element of our culture and share it through our favourite way, which is food.

If you’re choosing your food menu, pick your caterer and your food choices wisely – it’s the perfect way to share your tastes with your guests.

Vinyl Stickers

This may be old news by now – but vinyl stickers are amazing and make SUCH a difference when it comes to personalising your space. If you have a Cricut machine or know how to print them yourself then get your machine up and ready for the party, otherwise you can order them really easily from places like Etsy for a very reasonable price.

We added several vinyl touches to our engagement party that made the event so unique to us. First we had our names printed on our welcome sign that guests would see as soon as they came in. We also had our names in vinyl on the top of the antique mirror with all of our photos displayed.

One of my favourite touches was having vinyl lettering on our custom bar. It was just an old bar that I’d found and I’d had a lot of help with upcycling but the finishing touch for me really was our ‘Drunk in Love’ lettering on the front which I was obsessed with! 

It didn’t feature our names or anything like that, which felt a little bit more cliché, it just made the plain bar have a bit of character and fit right into our event and it made the final design uniquely ours.

All the vinyl stickers we used peeled off without a trace after the celebration, which was perfect for anything we wanted to re-use afterwards, like the antique mirror. I’d recommend keeping vinyls in mind for anything you want to add a little touch of personality to. They make all the difference.

Personal Location

Choosing a personal location for your engagement party is a wonderful way to make the event even more meaningful. When you’re thinking of locations for the event, consider a venue that holds sentimental value or reflects your shared interests and personalities.

This could be a place where you’ve created special memories, like a favourite park or beach if you’re outdoorsy people, or even a favourite historical site if you’re both into history.

For us, this was my parent’s garden. It was where we had spent so much time over the years, where our parents first met each other and it’s the heart of our family gatherings. It was really special to host our party there. 

Choosing to host your engagement party in a family garden can add such a deeply personal touch, especially if it’s a place where significant moments of your relationship have taken place.

A personal location not only adds emotional significance but also creates a warm, familiar atmosphere for celebrating with loved ones. A meaningful location ensures that your surroundings resonate with your story, making the occasion all the more special and memorable for both you and your guests.

That’s how I personalised our engagement party, and hopefully it’s inspired you with some ideas for how you can recreate a similar feel. We just wanted the event to be fun and reflect us and I’m so pleased that I really think it did that! 

You can catch me over on Instagram @the.curated.wedding where I’m always posting fresh inspiration and tips for hosting your countryside wedding and everything in the lead up to it!