At the moment I am just looking into the planning of the engagement party. My fiance and I will have to host the engagement party. Since this is my first time doing this, I researched like crazy on the do's and don'ts of planning the engagement party. We don't have a lot of money but would like everyone to have a good time. So we planned on having the engagement party at a restaurant. My only worry was at the time if we invite all 50 people that will eventually be invited to the wedding, we will be out quite a bit of money.
My fiance's suggestion is to just let the guests pay for their own meal and that way we will not be out of a lot of money.I don't want us coming off rude asking people to pay for their own meal and I know in engagement etiquette it says the host pays for the food.At the same time though, I know that now these days everyone doesn't completely follow etiquette and sometimes just does their own thing.Have you been in this situation before? What did you do?