<p>I will be graduating from college this spring, and I have a lot of out-of-town family that is planning to fly in for the ceremony and my graduation party the day after. I have extended family all over the country (everyone is pretty spread out), and I am the first in a large group of grandchildren to graduate from college, despite being fourth oldest. So this is almost like a small family reunion in addition to my graduation ceremony...some of the relatives I've spoken to are planning to stay in town longer than the weekend of my graduation festivities, and many are traveling long distances.</p>
<p>So my question is, when should I send out invitations to allow enough time for people to book flights, and how can I do this tastefully? Will the announcements be completely separate from invitations? Do I need both? I would like to use this as an opportunity for my family to get together (because we rarely ever do these days--our last real reunion was more than 10 years ago), and I don't want to leave anyone out. But I also don't want to look like I'm just trying to get money or gifts from each and every relative I can think of, because that is definitely NOT my motive here...</p>
<p>Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!</p>
<p>Congratulations on your pending graduation from college! My son is just beginning his journey of choosing which college to attend. I look forward to a big family reunion in 4 years (fingers crossed). I have received “Save the Date” magnets from neices and nephews who were graduating from college over the years. I was not offended at the early announcement and appreciated the thoughtfulness that the sender considered my need to make travel plans. Coming from a large family that is fairly spread out myself, we relish any reason to get together, especially a happy one. “Save the Date” Magnets can be personalized so if you wanted to you can say “the gift of your presence is all that is desired”. Just google
“Save the Date” Magnets. This will serve as your announcent so you would just need to send an invitation about 6weeks beore the date of your celebration to serve as a reminder and prompt guests to respond with their attendance decision.</p>
<p>You could just send them all a “save the date” email, and give them any details you know about the weekend (eg, what time is graduation? are there any other ceremonies or activities you know they might want to attend?). Be sure you find out if there are limitations on tickets/number of people before you do that, though. Depending on where your graduation is, do this NOW. We made hotel reservations for D1’s graduation for ourselves and the grandparents almost a year in advance because the town her college is in is pretty small. We have ended up a lousy hotels in the next town over, so wanted to get on it almost as soon as we could possibly make the reservations.</p>
<p>Also give some consideration to whether you want to have a big family meal outing, and where/when you would do that during the weekend. Restaurants around campus can get crazy crowded, and those that take reservations will be booking up quickly.</p>
<p>I guess I am saying that I would skip the formality of the announcement for right now and get the info out there for them. You can send announcements about a month before graduation.</p>
<p>You say they are family and are already planning on coming. Skip the expense of announcements and just e-mail everyone. That will help forgo the gift thing. And do it now, for the reasons intparent points out. Depending on your family’s tech knowledge, you could create something like a Gmail group and calendar so you don’t have tons of “Reply All” e-mails going around.</p>