party time.

One of the best things about getting married is all the celebrations that come with it! My sister (carly), my mom (clara), my aunt (deb), and my cousin (hailey) all were so sweet enough to throw us an engagement party to congratulate us! So of course I was excited to get in on the planning! 

I was inspired by a post on Pinterest so I wanted to make the party black and gold with a splash of color. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the party so we ended up doing a lot of DIY stuff. 

One of my favorite things about 
the party was the invites!
Invites can be so expensive so we decided to get creative and make them ourselves. We all went and picked out black & gold paper. I worked on the template for what the invites would say & had it printed on the paper we wanted at staples. It was so cheap! My sister, aunt & cousin all cut, glued, and layered the black and gold paper. This is how they turned out! I thought they came out pretty great!

I had a bunch of leftover vases from the anniversary party I threw my parents so we all spray painted the vases gold. 

Hailey & I went to costco the morning of the party and picked out some colorful flowers & some light pink roses to arrange in the vases we made. The flowers were a great price and came out so pretty!

My talented aunt deb went with me to Joanns to pick out some fabric and she made the table cloths! We got lucky and found a cute black & white chevron pattern. 

We also ordered some balloons black & light pink as decor from party city. With the left over paint we had we all painted some of the balloons half way up so that they had a "gold dipped" look. With the rest of the black balloons I took a gold pen and wrote different sayings on them like "love is sweet" "eat drink & be married" or "todd & amanda 11-8-14". Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of the balloons.

For the cocktail tables we wanted to keep it simple because they are so small. So we decided to decorate them with a candle and a framed picture of Todd & I. We were going to spray paint some of the left over frames we had lying around but instead we got lucky and found some gold frames from dollar tree! You'd be surprised how much stuff they have there! Who knew?!

My dad & todd cleared out the living room so that we would have more space for some of the cocktail tables to be inside. & We were so blessed to have my uncle ray. He was a life saver! He ended up getting us canopies, heaters, & lights for the backyard! He  also brought a huge speaker set up & Todd created some fun playlists for us so we saved money on a DJ but still had the same effect! 

My amazing cook of a mother made almost all of the appetizers for the party! We had all sorts of finger foods, even homemade cheese balls that were delicious. 

For the dessert station we ordered from Anna's cupcakes. They are the best cupcakes you will ever eat & a great price! Everybody raved about them!! My mom also made chocolate covered strawberries & cheesecake bites.

My absolute favorite thing about the party was the champagne bar. We  had mixers such as orange juice, cranberry juice & chambord! We also has frozen fruit like strawberries, raspberries, &  blueberries to keep your drink cold & add more flavor. But my favorite thing was we set out orange sorbet to scoop into your glass to make a dessert mimosa. It was so delicious & a lot of fun. 

The party turned out so wonderful & we had such a great time! Thank you everyone who came out to help us celebrate!

oh! & a special thanks to my dear friend Cyndy. I was so caught up in everything I forgot to take pictures of it all! She was so thoughtful and went around & took pictures of everything for me! So blessed she did this, otherwise id have no pictures!