<p>I wasn't planning to buy announcements, but learned that it was possible to buy as few as I want for about $1 each, and thought the grandparents might like one. </p>
<p>The instructions say (of course) that the announcement isn't complete without name cards, but the name cards have to be bought in lots of 50 and would therefore cost more than the announcements.</p>
<p>Would it look strange not to buy name cards (our few relatives know who she is; she is the only relative going to this high school)? Do people use name cards for anything else later? </p>
<p>I would greatly appreciate any thoughts you have!</p>
<p>Name cards are completely optional. What the company is really saying to you is, “We hope to guilt trip you into spending more money”, which is terrible manners indeed.</p>
<p>Graduation announcements do not have to be the “formal” announcements we had to order from the school. Now you can create your own, using photos of the grad…we created ours last year online and ordered them. Family and friends liked the picture of our daughter much more than they did the Balfour formal invite.</p>
<p>^^ Agree with KYParent. I made D’s on Snapfish - included photos of the graduate and also used the opportunity to let far-flung friends and relatives know where she was going to college: “We are pleased and proud to announce that DarlingDaughter has graduated from HomeTown High School and will be attending BigCity U in the fall” or something like that.</p>
<p>It was still hanging on Grandma’s fridge months later, while I’m sure the (expensive) Balfour one would have been recycled pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Happykid composed her own wording (along the lines of what PRJ suggests), chose the typeface, and picked out a box of blank invitation cards at Staples. I’m the poor soul who had to do the formatting, print up a couple of drafts, and then hand feed that heavy card stock through the printer here at home. Happykid also put together a photo-montage that we had color-copied at Staples. She used the smaller blank “reply” cards from the invitation kit as her thank-you cards. Grandparents, great-aunts/uncles, aunts/uncles, and a few other “older” friends got the mailed announcements. Everyone else got an emailed announcement (Happykid helped me find a suitable background in my yahoo account) with the photo-montage as an attachment.</p>
<p>And yes, these paper announcements and the photo sheet are still up on fridges and kitchen bulletin boards all over the country months after the event.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks for all the responses! I just learned that the announcements have precut slits in them, so if I bought the announcements without the namecards it would look funny. </p>
<p>I will look into the possibility of making announcements with my daughter’s photo on them. If you’d like to send any more hints for doing that, I will gratefully read them!</p>
<p>Make your own. The preprinted ones are fairly ugly, and they hit you up for other charges – frequently minimum purchase charges. D’s even ended up with the wrong time for graduation, even though the time had been changed months before the cards were delivered. School suggested that everyone just mark them up with the corrected time. They’re hugely profitable for the school, and that’s why there’s all the pressure to get them. But of all the announcements we received, the personally done ones were by far the best.</p>
<p>there are really good services online (not advertising any special one) by the large online photo companies. Just google “make your own graduation card”…We did ours with the Staples card stock since he drew his own artwork for the front of the card. We scanned the image, inputted it into the staples format, etc. Inside, I put a small composite picture of his first day of school photo (age 4) and his senior picture. Very cute. Son did his own wording for the announcment–a little odd, but that is my S. We did the envelope address labels in word using staples address labels…made the thank yous so much easier…he had the list of people who he sent invites to…he could keep track of gifts with this same list and then reprint the address labels for the thank you cards (they were handwritten and personalized). Even better…the addresses can be repeated, pretty much, with second child as well as christmas cards. We organized the after grad party using evites online in collaboration with another family… Go cheap, go unique, let the kid do some of the work…</p>
<p>I went the extra-cheap route. I found a graduation announcement template online and created a customized announcement for my D, including school graphics from the school website, and her photograph. Then, instead of printing on paper, I converted it into a .pdf file. Her graduation announcements were emailed instead of printed.</p>
<p>We bought the grad. annoucements through the company that did the senior pictures for S2.
We got the kind with a picture at the top and the announcement at the bottom. We composed the annoucement. Everyone really liked them.</p>
<p>We did the reg. annoucements w/ name cards for S1 and it was such a waste. I threw away almost as many as I sent out.</p>
<p>Make your own. They are infinitely cheaper and more unique. I did a photo graduation announcement made with Microsoft Picture It. I put a few senior pictures, the school logo, and the announcement information on 5x7 photo cards. More than half of the space was for photos the rest was for the text. That makes an announcement but if someone wanted to frame the picture then they just cut off the text. I was also able to save my photo file as a PDF and email to people we knew would want to know but would not come.</p>
<p>I paid .38 a print at Sams Club. I bought a package of 50 5x7 white stationary envelopes at Office Max for $9.99. I then purchased a package of 2010 foil seals in a school color at Party City $3.00 for 50. I even made my own matching mailing labels using the same colors and school logo. I had them color laser printed at Kinkos for less than .75 per sheet. </p>
<p>My announcements cost next to nothing and were one of a kind. I got tons of compliments on them.</p>
<p>I also made our own thank you notes using different pictures than we used on the announcements. They were printed on card stock (easier to write on) and were in black and white except for the words “thank you” and my son’s name which was in one of the school’s colors. Used the remaining mailing labels and seals from the announcements.</p>
<p>We only get 4 tickets to graduation so it’s seems silly to send an announcement to someone when they can’t even attend!! It looks like you are looking for a gift-don’t most people know if your child is graduating anyway and they will send a present if they’d like-I have always sent gifts to friend’s children without getting an announcement.</p>
<p>My goodness APenny, but you are WAY too organized! I have watched people stand at the Target kodak film computer and print their child’s name and date right onto a picture or make up announcements with the software offered on site.</p>
<p>This seems to be one “tradition” that has strongly gone over to the “don’t have to buy theirs” side.
With my first (pre-2000), nobody did an alternative announcement. Most folks had only cheap ink-jet printers at home and perhaps no idea how to use software that could do this. Nothing online for individuals.
With my last, about half of her friends did their own, about half used the school-sponsored ones.
Anyone with a bit of time and savy can get nice ones printed cheaper than the “official” ones. Does your kid care? The only difference would be that the school sponsored ones might have a raised imprint of the school logo/motto/crest and have a more 3D effect on that area…<br>
Back in the Jurrasic era, we had to order actual engraved namecards (and got the real metal plate with our name engraved within our order) Cool. We learned something about how engraving was done. Not that it will ever be done that way again, except for art prints…</p>
<p>We just got a sample of the preprinted (Josten’s) announcement in the mail. Meeting is next week to hear the sales pitch.</p>
<p>As an editor, I hate that the '11 on the cover is not an apostrophe and then the number eleven, but rather a single quotation mark and the number. (There is a difference.) And I know from S1, that the announcement doesn’t even name the city where we live (just the school name) and we send most of our announcements out of state.</p>
<p>Another idea is if your child has any friends heading into graphic design. I know students who designed their peers announcements. They were able to add the finished product to their portfolio.</p>
<p>Our D graduated in '09. We didn’t order one through the school. Instead we went to Michael’s and went to the wedding section. We bought a simple invitation kit that had a really fun design. She picked the wording from some samples online. We attached a photo to each. The kit had everything. I think it cost us about $40, not including stamps.</p>