r/engaged

Hi everyone! Is it weird or bad etiquette to invite only our friends to our engagement party and skip family? To give some context, we want to have a casual dinner and drinks, and we feel like a lot of our family members are either older, or way younger (under 21). Our families also haven't met each other yet and we wanted to wait closer to our actual wedding to introduce them.

Hello all! I am planning to propose very soon and getting very excited. My plan originally was to keep the proposal a little more private and intimate with just my partner and I on a little camping/hiking weekend trip (both our favorite activity) and I even booked a super nice hotel for after that she doesn’t know about. I was planning on just using a tripod to pretend like I was taking a cute or cool picture of us and then just record the moment and we could take more pictures together after. I feel like this would be easier to play off as being natural and actually making the moment surprising vs. a hidden photographer that comes out after the moment to take more pictures. I have a few photographers in my family and they charge an arm even for family so I guess that’s another big reason why I think the tripod could be better. But recently on our feeds a lot of people we went to school with have been getting engaged and I would say it’s about 70 professional photographers and 30 tripod/phone pictures. I guess my question is, should I hire a photographer or is the tripod idea still good?

TLDR: Is a tripod with iPhone good or should I hire a photographer?