besides our engagement weekend, this has to be my favorite weekend of 2018 thus far. in early may on a thursday night, jamie and i flew home to my parents’ house in texas to accomplish some wedding stuff [friday], have our parents meet for the first time [jamie’s parents and sister hope came in town friday night and we all spent the weekend together], and attend our ENGAGEMENT PARTY which my amazing parents threw for us [saturday], with the help of my sweet grandmothers and aunt debbie and uncle mark. needless to say, it was a very exciting weekend! the most important thing is that our parents hit it off [along with hope, mike, and priscilla]… we knew they would, but it sure is nice to have that first meeting behind us. ;)
and my parents went all out on the party – it was pretty spectacular. and we all had a complete blast! they work tirelessly to put it all together, and mimi and nama put in a ton of work too, as they helped so much with the cooking and decorating. uncle mark helped with a lot of the heavy lifting, and aunt debbie assisted with the decorating and was busy as a bee pulling stuff out of the oven and keeping the food platters full. i can’t thank these amazing people enough.
we tried to keep the party small-ish… we wanted jamie’s and my family’s meeting to be the main focus of the weekend, and we didn’t want to overwhelm jamie’s family with massive amounts of family and friends, so we pretty much kept it to people in the DFW area. uncle mark and aunt debbie usually come every year for mimi’s birthday [which was on that monday], and it was so nice to see them + they were so helpful. they stayed with mimi as did nama, because we had a full house over at the kojder’s!
the food and drinks were sooooo tasty [as they always are if my parents + grandmothers are involved], and the company was divine. such fun to see a lot of family friends we hadn’t seen in a while. and then we were absolutely floored with all the presents people brought – we weren’t expecting that, but people went above and beyond and showered us with the cutest and most thoughtful gifts! i can’t get over how kind people are and how loved it made us feel to have everyone come to the party. we love you all so much. here are some photos from our fun weekend:
{the cute invitation that my mom put together!}
{crawfish at shell shack on friday night with the fam!}
{this was fun.}
{i love these people and we love our crawfish!}
{it was this guy’s first time to try crawfish and i’d say that he enjoyed it! i’m a proud fiancée!} ;)
{a while back, i had taken a bunch of pictures of jamie holding shiner [shiner loooooooves jamie!] and his brother was making fun of him and added the heart eyes to this picture! so naturally, i had to take a bunch more on this trip…} ;)
{i couldn’t resist! they are the cutest. shiner with his paws crossed was just too much!}
{getting ready for the party. i love these men!}
{beautiful flowers on the porch}
{ready for a party!}
{the bar! my parents rented these barrels and the wooden tabletop for the party… they’ve been wanting something like this and thought they would give it a trial run. we loved it! it was pretty and made for a perfect bar.}
{they also had that galvanized tub with my future last name on it made for us! isn’t it cute?!}
{it was a gorgeous day so my parents made sure there was lots of outdoor seating available. the backyard looked so nice.}
{look at all that food! this wasn’t even all of it… this was right before the party started and some things hadn’t come out of the oven yet. it was all homemade… i have some amazing cooks in my fam!}
{the dessert table! jamie’s sweet mother had that gorgeous bouquet of flowers sent to our house for the party!}
{and mimi had these personalized cookies made for us by mom’s friend who is an amazing cookie decorator and whose cookies are actually TASTY too! sometimes cute cookies taste like hard pieces of cardboard but these were delicious.}
{here’s one up close with our date on it. aren’t they adorable?? i’m obsessed.}
{these lovely ladies put so much work into this party!}
{i love you all! thank you for everything!}
{all these events feel so surreal. i’ve dreamed about this season of life since i was a little girl.}
{my dad gave the sweetest toast for us.}
{cheers to being engaged!!!! so exciting that i get to be engaged at the same time as my only sibling!}
{sucking face, lol. if it matters, we were being told to do this!} ;)
{i love a good candid shot of a hair flip!} ;)
{love him.}
{i have the best parents! thank you for the amazing party!}
{our whole group. my people.}
{i feel very blessed that jamie has such wonderful parents too!}
{really happy that hope could make it down! she’s one of my bridesmaids and it was nice for her to have an opportunity to meet some of the other bridesmaids.}
{brothers and sisters!}
{my bridesmaids that live in the DFW area [linda, julee, katlyn, and lauren] + priscilla and hope, two of my four bridesmaids who live outside of DFW and the only two that are family. angela and noelle, we missed you both!}
{jamie and i sure are two lucky kids.}
{posing with one of our cute cookies!}
{so cool!}
{we had sooo much fun at the party, and at the end of the night, we opened our gifts. there were seriously so many! i’m speechless at the thoughtfulness of people.}
{how cool are these gifts??!! these are a few of many!}
{the soon-to-be veurink family! what fun!}
{had to get a picture with my MOH at the end of the night!!} ;)
{the following day… i had some recovering to do after our fun night, haha. but we went to church all together as a giant family and our family got to meet our pastor for our wedding, which was wonderful. he happens to be mimi’s pastor and is a really awesome guy. and then we took our parents to see our venue! it was everyone’s first time seeing it except for my mom and me, and they loved it. i was especially glad that jamie loved it, haha. they have this really cool video online that i was able to show jamie and his fam before i booked, which helped give them get an idea of where we’d be getting married, but i was glad that they finally got to see it in person.}
{dressed for church in my “future mrs. veurink” shirt from julee! :) and standing in our little chapel!}
the rest of the weekend was just low-key family time with both of our parents. they enjoyed getting to know each other and we had such a great time with them!
thank you so much to all the people that attended the party [we loved seeing you!] and for all the fantastic gifts. thank you to jamie’s parents and sister for coming all that way to meet my family and attend the party as well. thank you to nama, mimi, aunt debbie, and uncle mark for all your hard work. and thank you mom and dad, for throwing such a special party for us. so many fun memories. we love you all! xoxoxo