When Is It Acceptable to Send Facebook Invites for a Party?
So you decided to throw a party for a special occasion — congratulations! How do you plan on inviting all your friends or family? You can go the traditional route and send a card, or get a little modern and send a Paperless Post. You could text or call, if things are last-minute. Maybe you could even email a group of people (cc or bcc is a whole other topic).
But when is it acceptable to send a Facebook invite? Let’s discuss.
In college, Facebook invites were the norm. Everyone was on Facebook. I didn’t know anyone’s email address, and texting people seemed silly if the party wasn’t that very day. Facebook invites were just casual enough to be cool. Kinda like: “You can come to my party if you want, or whatever, I don’t care.”
After college things changed. I started using a real email address, my social life existed outside of Facebook, and I even started planning dinner parties weeks in advance instead of just a couple days. Progress. Facebook invites just started to feel less personal and aloof in a bad way.
On the invitation side, simple “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” options started piling up in my notifications, because I didn’t feel like they needed to be answered. A lot of the time these invites were from people I hadn’t talked to in years, inviting me and the rest of their Facebook friends to their friend’s concert in a state I didn’t live in. It became a little tacky, and as a result, so did the other more personal invites.
So unless you’re trying to invite everyone you know to the park for a picnic, or want people you haven’t been in touch with for a while to know they’re welcome to a big event that’s going on, Facebook events should probably stop after you graduate and move out of the dorm.
Above all else, let’s all take a vow together to never invite people to a wedding using Facebook invites.
Where do you stand? Are you fine with receiving or making an invite for an event on Facebook, or do you think it’s tacky? Are there exceptions to the rule?