Help me with graduation announcements

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am graduating from college with a BA. Now, this is a big deal for me, but not a HUGE deal (I mean, it was never really in doubt) and my own inclination is to keep the whole bit pretty low-key. However, it is a Very Big Deal for my mother, who thinks I am not properly appreciating my rite of passage. So, seeing as how she is my mother, and apparently has had a picture of “what it will look like when my baby graduates” in her head for quite awhile, a certain amount of fuss is going to have to get made.

One element of mom’s “what it will look like when my baby graduates” involves graduation announcements. I have never quite gotten the whole announcement thing. As far as I can tell, my parents generally get graduation announcements from the children of friends they haven’t spoken to since the Reagan administration, and they then feel obligated to send a check. Now, I don’t object to getting checks, but I always have kind of objected to a weird tradition that seems to involve tacitly asking for them, and I really was not planning on sending out announcements. I mean, everyone who actually cares about me knows, right?

But, to make my mother happy, I will be sending out announcements. So, in my utter cluelessness and inability to grok this strange tradition (and since I doubt Miss Manners will answer my letter in time) I appeal to DopeWisdom.

  1. Who, really, should I send these to? Are parents’ friends from the Reagan adminstration actually appropriate? What about my people like former pastor or high school teacher or such who I was kind of close to?
  2. Where do I get them?
  3. Do I go with the super mature and utterly boring traditional design? Are there better options?
  4. My real problem- I’m only inviting a few people to the ceremony, but the announcements my school sells are all kind of invitation/announcements. Is it possible to get ones that are just announcements, with no ceremony mentioned?
    a. If so, how in the world are they phrased? I really don’t have a clue what this would say.
    b. And then what about the people I’m actually inviting? Could I include a little note in the envelope with the details?

Hm… of the above, I think 4a is the most pressing, but any info at all would be a huge help.

Usual disclaimer- I don’t think this is a GQ type thing, but if it is, do please move it.

2

As far as where you get them, if you go to a school of any size your bookstore will stock them with preprinted info. You might have to order them personalized or something.

3

What a coincedence! I am graduating with a BA as well! (Actually I graduated last December but they don’t have the ceremony until May). At my college, they had an order form that you could pick up and get custom invitations.

You dial this number on the phone, and pretty much tell them what you want on the invitation, and how many to buy. Like your mom, my mother is making a big production of this, while I am kind of ambivalent (because technically I’ve been done with school for about four months now) but it makes her happy, and the graduation IS a big accomplishment.