Invitations

Have you noticed in the past few years how the internet has become so central to most of our lives? Most everyone I know has an email address and internet access. So, for your next party, why not utilize this medium for sending out inviations, all for free?

Used to, I would design my own invitations on a word processor and e-mail the invitations myself. But, recently I received in my inbox an invitation to an event that had been sent from a free invitation service online. When I R.S.V.P.'d to the event by going to the link that was on the invitation, I could see who all was invited, who had replied and comments they had made about the upcoming party. There was even a link to get driving directions: everything I needed to know was all right there!

So, for the next event that I hosted, I decided to use Evite's free service myself. I chose a design for the invitation from among a good selection, and filled out the details of the party. The website took care of e-mailing out the invitation on the day I specified and kept track for me who had viewed their invitation, who had R.S.V.P'd, and any comments people made. You can even have a place for people to sign up to volunteer to bring something to the party. You can select to send a reminder e-mail about the party as many days in advance as you choose, and after the party, you can upload photos to share with those who were invited.

Checking at the Evite website to see who has viewed your invitation is very important because it is possible that the invitation could be sent to someone's spam folder and they may never see it. This very thing happened to me. I noticed there was one couple on my list that had not viewed their invitation, so I called them to tell them about the party and mentioned the invitation that had been e-mailed. For this reason, and just because for some events it's probably more appropriate to send a tangible invitation through the mail, I personally will limit my use of Evite to more informal type events.

For someone who is always on the lookout for a good quality bargain I can use in intertaining (and you can't get a better bargain than free!) I think this is a great find! Maybe you'll want to try this yourself for your next event!

Copyright 2008 Entertaining On A Dime