Beth & Robbie’s Awesome Beach-Themed Engagement Party

So it’s been mentioned on here a time or two that we love throwing parties in our family.  They’re pretty collaborative, but generally masterminded by our Mum (Sandra!).  I happen to be the crazy photo girl though, so I have the photos of this and therefore I'm the one writing about it!  Mum, you can add some details wherever I’ve missed them, and tell everybody if I start taking extra credit ;)

So our fabulous little sister, Bethany got engaged a couple of years ago now, to Robbie (now her husband J).  Beth and Robbie both kind of LOVE the beach, and so a beach-themed engagement party was an obvious choice.  Here’s some of what we did!!

It was held in one of the recreation halls at church.  I love painting (not in a really-great-artist-who-can-paint-stuff-that-looks-like-anything-real kind of way – more like a there’s-a-part-of-me-that-never-left-preschool kind of way), so was excited to paint a banner for them!! J  I did it on the day, because it was massive, so we stuck heaps of paper on the wall and painted right onto it!  Don’t you love the ‘lifesaver’ ‘o’?? J  

'Congratulations Beth & Robbie!' - in process... :)

The colours Mum had chosen for the evening were a bright blue, a bright aqua blue, a bright almost yellow-green, and bright red.  We'd be able to get balloons, trays, towels, balls, and a bunch of other stuff in these colours so it all looked really good together - they were fun, bright, perfect beach colours! :)

I love playing with paint! :)

You can't go wrong with a balloon net!!

Mum had asked me to paint some 'beach huts' a few weeks before.  I should've taken photos of our little unit, with the beach huts spread and drying everywhere lol :)  It was lots of fun!

Most of the room done up and ready to go!

Beachy table centrepiece - nice, Mum! :)  Simple and easy to put together too!  And don't you LOVE the long table tablecloth with the stripes?!!

Towels as tablecloths for the little tables - and bunches of wild flowers in bright vases with some palm leaves underneath!

Mum found a bunch of $2 wakeboards at our local Reject Shop - awesome!  We also found  those cool light, multicoloured soccer balls, so we had those and a few giant balloons floating around!!  I think most of the palm leaves are from Mum and Dad's house! - They had a palm forest in an area of their yard - they were awesome!! And of course there were beach towels here and there, and that's one of the beach huts I painted.

I think Mum got the deck chairs at the Reject Shop too - not quite as cheap as the wakeboards so we only had a couple, but they looked great :)

A bucket of cans on ice, of course!

Home made door streamers!!! - In the party colours of course :)  I don't remember who it was who stapled all of these together, but I'm thinking Tammy?!

A friend of ours made Beth and Robbie's fabulous cupcake cake tower!!  The flowers looked great, and on each of the cupcakes is a Guylian chocolate - perfect for the beach theme, and soooo delicious they're making me want them right now!!

Just in case you didn't know what Guylian chocolates look like, thanks to the first image that popped up in my google search, mmmmm!

Sorry this is pretty dark! - But the finished sign with the cake!  Mum had lots of cardboard fish all over the place! :)

Mum filled a giant vase with M&M's - original and peanut - YUM!!! They looked great on the table! :)  This is halfway through the night when they've been eaten a LOT!

The plates were all in theme colours :)  (and now we use these platters all the time! :))  We ate lots of fruit, some homemade fruity sweets, and anything fish-shaped Mum found :)

One of the giant balloons that was floating around!!

The soccer balls were also a big hit!

And this was our cool island-shirted DJ, from Alan Casey Entertainment - he's also a long time family friend :)  We also had ping pong set up at the back of the hall just for a bit more fun! :)

And that was mostly what we did!!!

We spent most of the day setting up, but it wasn't too hard!  I got to play with paints all day, Tammy decorated and stapled and helped cook, Dad (the man) was in the kitchen, James and our younger twin brothers with a few friends took care of all the high things (like the balloon net!) and palms, and blowing up all those balloons!, and Mum ran around directing and doing everything as usual :)  The day of putting everything together is at least as fun as the actual party!!! :)  We think everyone had a great time, and I know we did!  It was a lot of fun :)

And I can't resist a photo of the cute couple :)

Happy Party Planning!!!