i'm old-fashioned...and i think invitations, at least for special events, are a necessity.

Family reunions always require a written invitation that include all the details. My older relatives dont have email, are hard of hearing and prefer a written invite. I still send an email to those who have and check their email regularly.

I only ever see them now for weddings and showers.

I may have emailed invites to my wedding.. haha. I'm classy like that.

I have always used email, Evite, or Paperless Post for invitations, but I'm toying with the idea of switching to written invites. Maybe it's just the people I'm inviting, but I have a HUGE issue getting timely RSVPs (or sometimes any response at all). Not a huge deal for a BBQ, but when I'm trying to plan a dinner party, it is really frustrating to have to follow up with people to get a head count. I'm wondering if hard copy invites and snail mail might lend a degree of formality that encourages my laid-back 20-something social circle to let me know whether they are coming or not!

Alas, in my part of the world paper invitations aren't just a matter of taste. Much of my rural area doesn't have fast internet service available, and I know lots of people who don't "do" e-mail and have no on-line access. Weird but, alas, true.

I love printed invitations and wouldn't consider an event complete without them. My daughter's birthday isn't until Thanksgiving, but I'm already dreaming about the invitation design.

@ Mdorothy, I totally hear you. My area is like that as well. My pet peeve is that where I live people do NOT grasp the concept of RSVP. For my wedding I used paper invititations, and I had to call 80% of the invited guests to ask if they were coming, and usually got the response "Oh we might decide to come on over *chuckle*" I firmly but sweetly (maybe not so sweetly, it was a month before my wedding and I was stressed) said I needed to know for sure so there would be a chair and a plate for them, since I had to rent them, otherwise they'd have to stand and couldn't eat. That *usually* got the point across. Paper or email, I think I would still have that problem.

I think all of the reasons for using paper invitations listed above are good ones. On the whole, however, I think it is a good thing that most people (that I know) seem to rely more on telephone/Facebook/email/evite. It's much greener and, unless it's a special event, most people will end up tossing the card after the event is over.

For my birthday open house champagne brunch last year, I sent out paper invitations and created an invitation-only Facebook event. I think the mailed invitations made the party register as more "real" or concrete for our friends; we had a much higher attendance rate than other (email/Facebook/phone only) invitations we've issued and --- even though we didn't ask for RSVPs --- guests were much more responsive than usual, so we got a reasonable headcount ahead of time.

The big difference in my social circle in recent years isn't a shift from paper to internet, but from telephone to internet or text for casual invitations. That is, paper is still used the way it always was: for special occasions and ceremonies, for more formal or structured parties, and for events which really require an RSVP.

We just held a large corporate event and for the sake of the environment and also managing an event with 700+ invitations, we decided we'd use Pingg. Now this is no diss to the Pingg site, but we had huge issues with the invitations because so many corporate spam filters blocked our invite (which came from the pingg.com domain). We were scrambling to call around at the last minute to figure out who was coming. In the end it would have been probably similar cost and a lot less stress if we'd just used paper invites - arguably, we could have sent more basic email invitations as another alternative.

So dead? I don't think so ... but I can definitely see their popularity taking a big dip. Email is just too nice, too convenient, even with some of the pitfalls.

I wasn't sure whether the poll was referring to printed invitations (as stated) or physical invitations. Even the smallest gathering at my apartment is usually accompanied by a physical inviatation (usually handwritten), but I rarely want to shell out the time/money/pre-planning for printed invitations.

If you're inviting your friend and his family over for dinner then no invitation is necessary. If you're having a big event (say a house warming party or backyard BBQ with dozens of invitees) then yes, printed or handwritten invites are a must! Besides, getting mail is fun!

We sent printed invitations for our wedding, which was fun and felt like an old timey ceremony. For any other event in my life, I would never consider using paper invitations. Calling people or sending emails is more efficient. I know sometimes for family events we receive them because some older family members do not use the Internet.

I think they're a nice tradition for really special events, like weddings, silver anniversaries, graduations... but for non-landmark birthdays, BBQs, etc., I think electronic is the right way to go. It saves paper and a lot of other costs, for one thing. A lot of evite-like places have options to import to calendars which are convenient, and then with handheld devices you have your information portable in case you realize you do need directions after all. I guess I don't like buying and mailing future trash outside of Christmas cards, which I do like to hold in my hands.