First of all, congratulations in advance as you already make a commitment to level up the relationship!
So, here I am to offer my help you with your engagement planning. I will share steps by steps according to my experience last year. We are engaged on 18.8.18. We both love the date...haha.
So, without further due, let's check this out.
Step 1: Go for pre-marital counselling
First, you two need to have an agreement to go for pre-marital counselling with a local pastor. For us, this is really important because this will become your marriage life foundation. During this stage, I remember we had four times sessions with our local Pastor. He brief us what is marriage, what you should know about marriage life and etc. What most interesting session is he gave us "Get to know each other" kind of form. In this form, we fill in our name, family background, strength, weakness, our expectation on each other, what I want to do in my life( my life plan), my hobby, my favourite food and etc. After we filled in the form, we swapped the form for 1 week and he asked us to look and really understand what we write on our form. After that one week, we meet him again and we both decided to proceed as we will willing to accept whatever in the form. For me, this part is really important. If you can't accept whatever he writes, then it's better to stop. Yes, I know it's sound so cruel but its better to stop now than later. So, don't skip this step it's really important!
If you asked, my partner is not the same church with me, how lah?
You try to talk to him/her about this and ask him/her whether he/she wants to do this. As I said, you both need to have an agreement to do this for the sake of your marriage foundation. If he/she don't want, then you should know what you should do.
Another question is what if we have a different religion, can we do this?
Definitely NO. That relationship is not going anywhere. So, it's your choice and you can decide whatever in your life with the wisdom that God gave you.
Step 2: Inform family and set the date
Second, you need to inform both family that you two want to get engaged on whatever date. It's so hard to decide on the date actually but you need to set the date!
For us, we just want the date 18.8.18, we both love this date. Also, I don't remember, I told my friends few years ago, I will engage on this date...haha, it's come true! During this time, start to inform your boss you gonna take leave and share the invitation e-card to family and friends. For me, during this time, its better to use e-invitation because its save cost and no one see the hard copy now. You can check our engagement e-invitation here.
Tips: You can use this website for your e-invitation, www.canva.com.
Step 3: Buy flight tickets
If you live away from where you want to do your engagement, purchase your flight tickets first.
Once decide the date, we bought our tickets. The moment we purchased flight tickets, the event is confirmed! unless you want to waste your precious money. If you live in the area you want to do your engagement, then you can skip this step.
Tips: Buy flight on Wednesday, it's cheaper! but need to rajin-rajin survey ya.
Step 4: Purchase rings
Soon after that, we went to buy engagement rings. It's quite a funny story when we went to purchase our rings. Before we went to buy the rings, we already survey the kedai emas and already decided what we want but we did not purchase it first because usually there will be promotion so we are waiting for that. When the promotion day has come, we went to purchase it and you know lah when promotion day, it's so crowded! hahaha but for the sake of our rings and save money, we go for it and get it!! The moment we got our rings, I know already it's getting REAL! The feeling just surreal. When I looked at my boyfriend ( that time), I just can't believe it! The dream almost come true!
Step 5: Buy attire
After that, I start looking for our attire and what the theme for the ceremony. In my opinion, you don't really need a theme for engagement, if you plan to have a simple one lah. If you want to have a grand one, then its depends on you. For us, we want a very simple engagement ceremony. So, we decided to wear and decorate as simple as we can. For my engagement dress, my boyfriend splurged a little bit. He purchased RM200+ engagement dress for me! hahaha I also feel like my engagement dress is so expensive. You can see my engagement dress here.I shared tips on how to buy engagement dress there.
Step 6: Buy food and drinks
Then, start to prepare for decorations and buy food and drinks. For decorations, I just go for majong paper as my background, no flowers just a very creative decoration, I DIY-ed it myself.You can check my simple decorations here.
For food and drinks, this is important for any event, so always have an extra budget for this and make delicious food for your guests.
Step 7: Prepare the medium priority stuff
For me, for engagement ceremony, photographer and makeup artist are a medium priority. If you can afford it, then go for it. But, for simple engagement, this is what I think. I'm thankful I have friends that can help to take photos and family that can do my makeup, thank you, Alyn, I will remember this forever. Don't afraid to ask help, that's family and friends for.
Step 8: Engaged!
Don't forget to inform Pastor as well.
Make a simple program and go for it!
These steps are from my own experience so you can share it if you feel like it will be beneficial for somebody. And, if you want to know on how much we spend on our engagement, please stay tuned on my blog, I will share about that on next post.
If you have any comment, questions you can always comment below or you can find me on my Instagram (@keriitleto) for DMs or any update.
Love,
Aya
What's your opinion?
Please share your thoughts.