Minna & Simon’s Love-Filled DIY Engagement Party is incredibly fun and kistchy, and we’re so excited to share it with you! Minna tells us about how she and Simon came to be, and about creating their super sweet & intimate DIY engagement party…

We’d been together for about 7 years, and it made sense to make our relationship official! After 2020’s lockdown we were itching to move on with our lives. Simon booked a weekend away at the Park Hyatt in Melbourne and proposed as soon as we got there! It was lovely, and he designed the engagement ring with Cushla Whiting. It’s a ruby which I’ve always wanted.

The engagement party was at the Builder’s Arms in Fitzroy. We originally wanted a huge engagement party, but then 2021 turned out to be pretty similar to 2020, so we opted for a small family lunch. Only about 20 people came so it was intimate and unlikely to be cancelled due to number restrictions at the time!

I wanted to have a kitschy red and pink colour scheme that incorporated Gypsophila the flower. My mum is a florist and has her own shop in Hurstbridge, so it was obvious who would be doing the flowers. I love working with mum, she always listens to my very specific requests and translates what I want perfectly. We wanted everyone to be relaxed and enjoy the thought we put into the decorations.

The cake was by Zee Scott and it was red velvet flavour. It was made specifically from the vintage Wilton book that Zee and I have. I was stoked with it! It was probably my favourite detail! And also seeing family after a very long time not having seen them all together. It was a perfect day.

The main decorations were the beautiful flowers, however, we also got a few balloons, and silver streamers, and I bought in my disco balls (I have a number of disco balls at home for some reason?). I also made place cards out of the love cake image, and paper fans for each guest. I used my Cricut machine to make the fans, and I hand cut out all the cake images for the place cards. It took a while!

I always create my own invitations for everything! My favourite thing to do. So the starting point was looking through a book I have, it’s a vintage Wilton cake book from the 1970s. The cake image I saw that spurred my idea was a ‘Love’ cake. I used this as a starting point for the invitation. I scanned this image and used it as a ‘motif’ on the invitation. Then it was natural for the cake to be at the event ‘in real life’. I put a call out on Instagram to see if someone could actually make the cake pictured. Zee Scott replied saying that she could absolutely do it, and she even had the vintage book that had the cake pattern in it! So it was absolutely perfect. The cake was a real talking point, that’s for sure!

I made heart shape paper fans out of cardboard and giant paddle pop sticks. I really enjoyed the process but it was lucky it was a small group of people because I don’t think I could have made any more! After the party was over I also made little paper ornaments to say ‘Thank You” to our guests.

I wore a dress by Sea New York. I’d wanted it for a long time but had no reason to get it, then when I decided on the colour scheme for my engagement party it was a no brainer to purchase!

I just wanted everyone to relax – we’d only just come out of lockdown at the time so I just wanted a really chill lunch with family. We had minimal speeches, my Dad said a few words and so did Simon’s Dad.