So I’m hosting a baby shower for some friends of mine – what are dopers’ thoughts on sending evites instead of paper invitations? I’d like to save a few dollars on stamps, and I figure it will be easier to track RSVPs, send reminders, etc.
FWIW here’s the details: it will be at the house of the parents-to-be (not ideal but my place is too small and a restaurant is way out of my budget), we’ll cook a meal but nothing fancy. The guests will will mostly friends of the couple and I think it’s safe to assume they all use email. The only person who might not is the grandma-to-be, and I can just call her.
So you do think an evite would look tacky or make people take the event less seriously (not RSVP, not bother to show)? I actually don’t care of the people invited think I’m lazy, but I don’t want the couple-of-honor to feel like I’m phoning this one in.
I work in the Web and email industry (build Web sites and run an email server) and I never ever consider email to be reliable. You never know what might get caught in an ISP’s spam filter, or get caught in a person’s local spam filter. Especially if the email is not expected. Doubly especially if it’s from someone you don’t know (your co-worker’s friend who is throwing her a shower).
There is a good chance you will end up spending time tracking people down who didn’t respond because they never got the evite.
Postal mail is so much more reliable.
Plus, it seems to me (from when I threw a shower last summer) that the invitations are a big part of the shower planning. My mom and I actually bought an invitation making KIT that required us to put tab A into slot B, and affix little bows and use 80-cent stamps. There are of course cheaper alternatives but when you walk down the Baby Shower aisle at the party store, you sure do get the message that the invites are important.
You can, however, put your email address and phone number for the RSVP. I got about 50/50 phone/email responses.
Personally I wouldn’t find it tacky to get an evite, but like I said I am heavily entrenched in the online world. I wouldn’t be surprised if others found it tacky.
Anyway, my vote is no. Mainly because it’s unreliable.
in the last few years every invitation I have gotten in writing has been through Evite or email. I almost forgot that people send out written invitations for events other than weddings. In my experience, then, it is not tacky at all to use Evite.
If we get an evite or an ecard we won’t see it. Possibly if its in the form of an e-mail (all the information in the text) but even then its not a sure thing. We’re in our 50s now (I can say that since my wife recently joined me there <G>) and still use things like the phone and cards through the USPS. A notice in our in-box that "you have a card waiting for you at http://… -------- we won’t bother going to see it.
In general I don’t think the online invitation is tacky. However, the free evites that I have used have all included some type of advertising in the invitation. This was fairly subtle on the sender’s side and was more obvious on the recipient’s side. Any way you slice it, that’s not in great taste.
The other negative of evites is that sometimes the negative RSVPs build some negative momentum around the event, since everyone can see them online. Of course, the opposite can happen, too.
I’m not saying I absolutely wouldn’t do it, but those are some additional downsides that hadn’t been mentioned.
When situations like this happen ask yourself, “What would June Cleaver do?”
Would June consider this tacky? If you don’t know let June be your guide, she went to a boarding school “back East” so you know she knows what to do for all social occasions
