OK, that’s tacky too. Asking for formal dress is one thing, but asking you to buy a new dress and telling you what color it should be? No.
Dude. The only way to teach these folks that their invitation is unacceptable is to not accept it. Don’t set a precedent. If people decline to attend, maybe they’ll catch a clue–unless you want to do this every year?
I think it’s a wownderful idea and you should pay up immrediately.
Of course, I also think it would be an equally great idea to charge the hosts $50 for the pleasure of your company for the evening 
Exactly. This isn’t an “invitation” to a “party”, it’s an “advertisement” for a “special event”.
The only way people like that learn NOT to do this is if their invitees don’t show up.
Mostly because most invitees won’t have the cojones to call them on that B.S.
Rude, rude, rude.
There is a way to throw that kind of casual, ‘we’re all in this together’ event. But it’s not with formal written invitations and a dress code. It’s by saying/emailing ‘Hey, we were thinking everyone should get together before the holidays. We could use our house on the 15th and people could either bring food/booze or we could pool money and buy a bunch of stuff. What do y’all think?’
If you carefully recognize that you’re not ‘inviting’ ‘guests’ to an event you’re ‘hosting’, but instead are asking people if they want to join in on a group event, then it’s fine. But you can’t charge cover and still pretend to be the gracious host, you have to pick one.
Modified After sent? Even worse.
If I were in your situation, just to amuse myself, I would dress to the nines and show up anyway. But, I would not pay. What are they going to do? Have a bouncer collect at the door? If pressed I’d just laugh and say, “I never got the update.” or, “I thought that was a joke, surely you’re not charging people money to come to a party!?!”
The whole thing is just wrong, wrong, wrong. For one thing, you shouldn’t have to tell people to dress up. If you want to have a formal party, you let people know by treating it like a formal party…you send an formal invitation. People can usually more or less figure out how to dress based on the kind of invitation they receive, plus maybe a little word-of-mouth help. And you DON’T ask people to chip in. Formal dinners are given by their hosts, and the attendees only pay for their plate if it’s a benefit.
On the other hand, if you want to have a casual get-together that everyone helps contribute to, that’s great, too, but then you send an e-vite and ask everyone to bring a dish. In this case, you probably shouldn’t expect people to wear black tie, because that’s not the kind of party your’re giving.
Tacky.
At college level, I don’t know that I’d mind…I’d have friends who would throw parties…one in particular was always throwing them and we’d usually chip in five bucks or so. Actually, there was a dress code at that, too. But the whole point was that they were cocktail parties. It was to differentiate them from the regular college parties where people just drink beer and wear jeans…plus I knew that person pretty well so it wasn’t a big deal. Things do seem different once you’re past undergrad, though…
Yeah, friends chipping in is fine, if done right, but is best done by sharing food and drink rather than cash, and formal parties are also fine. Combining them is horrendous.
This makes it even worse! You don’t charge people to come to a formal party, anyway, but you most certainly don’t send out invitations and then change them to include the fact that you’re now charging everyone.
That’s Tacky +1.
ETA: Just noticed about requiring colors for formal wear. Correction. Tacky +2.
Yeah- telling your party guests what colors they should wear to your party? Tacky and weird.
This is starting to sound like something you might read about on the Etiquette Hell site. You might want to submit it to them…
I am shocked you are all missing the point. The cover charge is necessary to keep folks from just coming to hear the band on not buy any drinks.
Even overlooking the tackiness of charging for a party, they not only want to tell you what to wear but what colors it should be? I don’t think so. But then again, red and white are colors not found in my wardrobe.
The only parties that my friends and I would host and charge people were house parties with themes. Even though we used to let people who adhered to the theme in for free (or a dollar at most) we weren’t big on charging close friends. Now our parties are always free but we also tend towards potluck style for food things.
I really would not want to attend if my friends were charging me. If you do go, bring a garbage bag for food and a few jugs for booze.
Evidently they’re so poor that they need a fund raiser. They went through their addressbook for [del]marks[/del] friends and thats how you got on the list. I’m surprised the header didn’t say:
“For just $5 a party, you can keep Biffy and Spuds in Brie for a week. Won’t You help…?”
Write/send them a check for a $1, list ‘charitable donation’ in the subject line, and find something else to do that night. Or send a reply that $5 has been donated in their name to the Emily Post School of Manners.
Money is very tight in my house right now. When I wanted to give my partner a birthday party, I looked at the economics of it. I can swing the paper plates and cups, I have wine already and will buy some beer, diet soda, and juice, and make a soup. I can’t afford to do more than that right now, so it’s a potluck. I’ve asked people to bring food from countries that have water buffalo, because my partner encouraged people to donate through Heifer rather than give her gifts for her 50th birthday. Our friends are happy to bring a dish, glad I’m making soup because it’s cold outside, and entertained by their internet research on water buffalos. I would never as them to contribute money for food or alcohol under these circumstances. I’d be shocked if any of them would come if I made such a rewuest.
I once was invited to a massive, outrageously complex Chinese banquet at a friend’s house, with a request for (IIRC) $10/person to help defray costs and a request for kitchen helpers. This was absolutely fine with me because I knew that the amount of food was staggering and the quality extremely fine. However, it was clearly an “event,” not a “party.”
Actually, I don’t see telling your party guests what colors they should wear to be a big deal–provided you are a tad more flexible than this dress code appears to be about the level of formality. If I were hosting a party, I might have a “Candy Cane Party” invite/encourage everyone to wear red and white and make it potluck, if I couldn’t afford to feed everyone at the level I wished to feed them.
Or one could have a sports party where everyone was invited/encouraged to wear team colors. But once you get to a formal dress code, demanding red and white seems bizarre and rude.
We’ve had themed parties, where we have suggestions for dress - one of our friends hosted a “silly pants” party where everyone was supposed to wear pants they’d normally never wear in public. Some people wore normal pants, however, and that was fine.
(The only party I’ve ever been to with an enforced dress code was the one my aunt threw last year - she demanded all of us (cousins and I) wear red and/or green or else we wouldn’t get to eat.)
Anyway, I could see announcing on the invitation that the party has a color theme, suggesting that guests might like to dress up in accordance, but having a dress code for a house party is just weird.
My first thought is that the cover charge is tacky but not rude, in that it shows poor judgment but no one gets hurt in the end. But changing the invitation puts people in a very awkward spot if they’ve already accepted, so yes, rude.
Formal dress wouldn’t bother me, but ‘red and white’ is sorta odd. I personally would just show up in my favorite black dress and pretend I don’t own a red one (I do, a bright red halloween costume that also serves as a bridesmaid dress) but I can think of a few people who would go out of their way to borrow something.
I think theme parties are different. As long the guests are treated equally no matter what they wear, its no problem suggesting what to wear as a costume. I have an annual “golf pros and tennis hos” party and next spring I’ll do “thrift store prom” It’s only the gung ho people who dress up anyways.
My Software Design and Design Patterns professor had a philosophy that I think fits well here. Before any sort of design effort can be started, you have to invite people to design with you. As he pointed out, a lot of times this step is sorrowfully over-looked, and people end up either not feeling appreciated, enter begrudgingly, or simple aren’t interested. As such, designing the invitation is the most important step.
In this case, I think this philosophy translates well, because the invitation sets the tone for the party. Aside from other potentially time consuming things (like personalizing the invitations), it’s very simple to make people feel wanted and welcomed and comfortable. IMO, this sort of invitation fails miserably. As was pointed out, a number of other invitees felt uncomfortable with it which means, that some people probably won’t go, and many of those that do, probably won’t enjoy themselves. Lest the hosts change their invitation, I would expect that party will probably not be very enjoyable and not worth attending, even if you had zero qualms with the invitation.
Having some sort of dress code? Fine, it’s reasonable to expect that there’s going to be some sort of threshold for what’s acceptable simply because it isn’t a football or drinking party. Setting one helps set a mood for the class of people, activities, refreshments, etc that will be present. And it can help some people avoid feeling uncomfortable by attending under or over-dressed. And, of course, specifying colors is not only exceedingly tacky, but forces people to potentially have to choose between buying an outfit they’d otherwise not wear versus attending. I, for one, do not like to wear red, or more white than a shirt. Besides, it IS a Christmas party, so I imagine most people will intuitively wear Christmas-y colors.
Besides, IME, the occassion often makes the dress fairly intuitive. When I was planning with my then-fiancee earlier this year for our engagement party, she wanted to include a line stating that it was casual in the traditional sense (ie, just a collared shirt is probably under-dressing, but a suit is over-dressing), and it took me a while to explain that casual would probably be interpretted as wear whatever you want. Ultimately, the fact that it was an engagement party where we were serving wine and champaigne would inherently imply to dress fairly nicely. IIRC, most of the guests wore a shirt and tie (or the female equivalent), and all but one of the rest wore at least a very nice collared shirt; the one who didn’t was somewhat socially awkward, so I suppose that was to be expected.
Either way, people generally dressed appropriately, and the party was very successful. I would imagine it would translate well here, and were I to attend, I’d probably wear a nice collared shirt, no tie, and probably avoid black (but that also has the complicating factor that black is 90% of my wardrobe, so that may not stick for everyone). Although, if I were to attend a party that had a cover, I’d probably consider wearing a tie since that implies to me that it’s a bit more formal.
Having a cover charge? As was said, unless the money is for a specific cause, like charity, it makes people uncomfortable to feel like they have to pay their friends to hang out with them. If you can’t afford to cover everything, that’s fine, have people contribute, I’m sure they’ll understand. I think potlucks are wonderful because, even if I end up contributing more money, I get to contribute something personal to the party and, of course, they make great ice-breakers: “Wow, YOU made the caserole? You have to give me the recipe…” Even for something like alcohol, which I could never really feel comfortable charging for, if you make it BYOB, at least people can make sure there’s a drink there that they like, and not be stuck with a bunch of alcohol they don’t want to drink.
Either way, especially considering that holiday parties tend to be only slightly formal and it’s more important to be homelike and comfortable, I think the option of doing a potluck is vastly preferable to asking for money. Yes, a potluck makes it less “formal” and if that’s their goal and they can’t afford it, I’m sorry but… TOUGH. If it’s important to them, they should budget for it next year.
It may or may not be overtly rude, but at the very least, they’ve done a very poor job considering the impression they’ll be making on their friends, and planning in general. I can’t imagine a party like that will go over very well and, if you do go, unless you LOVE the company (in which case, I can’t imagine they’d charge if you were THAT close to them), you will probably be finding yourself wanting to make up and excuse to leave within an hour of arriving. If I got that sort of invitation, I imagine I’d have more fun loafing in front of the TV, and so I’d decline to go.
If I were in your shoes, I would politely decline the invitation. I would not lie and say “we have other plans” either because, beside the fact that it’s a lie, it sends the mesage that I would have gone if I weren’t otherwise busy. If they then asked me why I couldn’t attend, I would be honest about it and tell them that I didn’t think I’d enjoy myself at the party and explain my reasoning as best as I could to avoid hurting their feelings. At the very least, it would benefit them to understand why people aren’t attending and/or why the party will likely flop, so they can do a better job next time they want to host a party.
It looks like a rather tough situation for you and, depending on how close friends you are with these people, could end up making things rough. Regardless of whether you attend or not, I hope you have an enjoyable time that evening.