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Another graduation question-who do you send announcements to?


Dmmetler
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I'm torn between wanting to send it to everyone I know....after all, I'm kind of proud of my design (and since I designed and am printing my own at home, the cost for sending an extra one is very, very small), but not wanting it to be seen as a gift grab. We get very limited tickets for graduation as well, so it's not like local friends can go (in normal years, the local homeschool grad we would have done is in such a big place that it really doesn't matter, and it's pretty normal for half the homeschool group to show up to cheer on their friends, but this is a smaller one designed to meet covid requirements as they existed in January, so it's pretty much just immediate family). We are planning to do a party/reception, probably either the weekend before or the weekend after at a neighborhood park. 

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I'm wondering the same. We don't keep in contact with most of our extended family and my ds has an unusual group of friends who are mostly adults and not local. I think I'll do an announcement and then include a card with an invite for our home based ceremony/open house for those I think might be willing to come. I got an announcement for my cousin's son which was kind of strange since I haven't seen my cousin since I was 12 and I've never met his son. I only know about him because of Facebook.

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I wouldn't send a paper announcement in the mail unless you were inviting them to something or soliciting a gift OR if the person is not on social media.  I think that in-the-mail announcements are so rare anymore that they carry more weight and expectation.  I'd do an online version for the people who will see it there. 

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Well, an announcement is not the same as an invitation, so there's that. 🙂 Historically, people send announcements to everyone who might care that the young person is graduating; as long as your announcement doesn't address gifts in any way (including telling people not to send gifts, or to send money instead!) then you're good to go.

And I disagree about doing anything online. This is important. An actual invitation says so. Also, everyone has a physical address, but there are still some who don't do online, such as my dh, who is in charge of the Internet for a government agency, so it isn't that he's old and decrepit and doesn't know about stuff; he's just not much for online social things.

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We don't announce the graduation to anyone unless we are inviting them to it or to the party (on another date).  Because of size limitations, our homeschool group's graduation ceremonies are limited to 20 people per grad.  We just invite local extended family to that and have cake afterward there with the group.

For the open house grad party, held another weekend, we send printed invitations to:

1.  Extended family our dc know well:  our dc's grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  We also invite our own aunts/uncles, which gives our parents a nice reunion with their siblings.  We don't invite our cousins or their dc. 

2.  Other adults/families that have been important in our dc's lives:  close family friends, neighbors, and long-term activity instructors/mentors.  

3.  A few of our old friends who live within an hour's drive and who don't actually know our dc well, but are happy for them/us and would love to help us celebrate; these are the same people who invite us to their dc's graduations and weddings, even though we don't know their dc well, either.  

4.  Any kids our dc want to invite.  

For our extrovert, that meant we invited about 150 people total; around 120 came.  For our introvert, we invited around 100 people, and 80 people came.  ETA:  These numbers were for the people, not the number of invitations.  We know a lot of large families.  😉 

 

Edited by klmama
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I don't remember ever receiving a graduation announcement.  I guess most people who care about the person either already know s/he's a senior, or wouldn't need to know.

But if I was doing announcements, if on paper, I would probably send to my Christmas card list or similar.  If electronic, I'd send to anyone who knows / cares about my kid.

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I am planning to send paper announcements to grandparents, aunts/uncles, great-aunts/great-uncles, my dad's cousin who is the family historian, and a few family friends.  When DD graduated a few years ago, it also included an invite to her graduation/party.  This year DS is graduating, and we aren't doing a party for covid reasons, although we are still discussing a possible online meetup of some sort.  Likely it will just be an an announcement.  I am not sure if I will do anything electronically or not.

I have decided in my "old age" that people have so many varied ideas on sending announcements/invitations/whatevers, that I just don't care if they see it as a gift grab or not.  If they think so little of me, that is on them.  I am just sharing a joyous occasion that is complicated by a pandemic and we are all doing the best we can.  I would hope people will show a bit of grace, and not assume negative greedy intent.

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I also made our daughter's highschool graduation announcements/invitations. We sent them to everyone to whom we already sent a holiday letter. To those nearby, we sent an invitation to attend the actual ceremony/reception. To those distant, we adjusted the wording and sent an announcement. 

Regards,

Kareni

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I literally had no idea this is a thing. 

Wouldn’t anyone who needs to know that someone is graduating already know? 
 

eta: oh, I probably should have read through the other responses first. I’d never heard of doing such a thing.

 

Edited by MEmama
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I've decided family we see at least once a year gets an invitation to the graduation party.  A handful of very close local friends will also get invited- these are people we see and talk to regularly.   Total is only about 30 invitations.   I will do an announcement online, too.  I plan a personal graduation ceremony-ish, food, and visiting.   Maybe some outdoor games,  too. 

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I'll do just what I did for her sister a few years back: Costco picture card I put together (like what we get for Christmas cards), order 25 instead of the 50 I get for Christmas cards, send to extended family and some close friends who either have kids who grew up with dd or who played a roll in getting dd to this point. I feel like this is more of a life-achievement-announcement than either a gift-solicitation or ceremony-invitation that the school's official announcements would be (we don't order those).

For her sister's announcement, I chose a layout that allowed 4 or 5 pics and had 1 of her as a little girl on there. If this was a homeschool graduation, I would so totally do that with several pictures of homeschool in action through the years.

Edited by Ali in OR
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It's not normal in my circles to send announcements before or after social media became normal.  Either you're sending and invitation to the party and/or graduation, or you don't send anything except maybe an updated senior picture to the people you usually send updated pictures to.

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Part of it, for me, is simply that this is the ONE senior class my homeschool will ever have. I've been involved in education for lots of kids, but I only have one that is mine. 

 

And part of it is that with so much of the other stuff this year being messed up, I kind of want to do the stuff we CAN do. 

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2 hours ago, SKL said:

But if I was doing announcements, if on paper, I would probably send to my Christmas card list or similar.

This is what we do. My mom had me send announcements to anyone we ever knew even if there was little to no communication/relationship. Her reason? "Get what you can from them." No joke.

People with whom we are involved know our kids are graduating. We expect nothing from them (gifts, etc.). Extended family knows. I'll post (with their permission, of course) and "CONGRATS!" kind of thing on FB for my kids and that's it.

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I didn’t send announcements. I don’t remember receiving them from anyone either. Maybe it’s just not done in my little circle (most of my son’s friends were not homeschooled.)

We got a few invitations to parties and they usually had a couple of senior pictures on them, much like Christmas cards that have photos of the family on them.

Edited by Garga
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At our graduation is families in our cover school and friends and families of the graduates.  Dd18 graduates this May.  All of her local teen friends are in our cover school and we’ll invite a few other friends and extended family members.  We have some too far away to come family and good friends, as well as lots of great-aunts and great-uncles that I know will appreciate getting an announcement.  So we are sending out lots of announcements.  I know some will send gifts or money and some won’t.  Not worried about it.  We run into the problem of wanting to send one to x, but if we send to x, we have to send to y.  So we send to all the x’s and y’s.

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I've gotten a handful of graduation announcements over the years, from people who either weren't having a party or people who didn't invite me/my family to a party. I didn't send any out. The people who know us know my kids graduated from high school. I considered it a milestone but not a particular accomplishment for my kids and it seems most people in my circles feel pretty much the same way about their kids' graduations. 

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I did not really send announcements, I sent invitations to a big grad party. I can see why you would want to but it seems to be not done much anymore, at least in my circle. I think that is a by-product of years of graduation announcements being viewed as a hint that a gift was being requested. 

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1 hour ago, Quill said:

I did not really send announcements, I sent invitations to a big grad party. I can see why you would want to but it seems to be not done much anymore, at least in my circle. I think that is a by-product of years of graduation announcements being viewed as a hint that a gift was being requested. 

Same for us - I've never received or sent announcements.  

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6 hours ago, MEmama said:

I literally had no idea this is a thing. 

Wouldn’t anyone who needs to know that someone is graduating already know? 
 

eta: oh, I probably should have read through the other responses first. I’d never heard of doing such a thing.

 

You didn't do it when you graduated from high school? I did. All multiple-hundreds of my classmates did it, too. We ordered announcements through our school.

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3 hours ago, Quill said:

I did not really send announcements, I sent invitations to a big grad party. I can see why you would want to but it seems to be not done much anymore, at least in my circle. I think that is a by-product of years of graduation announcements being viewed as a hint that a gift was being requested. 

I think the tradition probably started when high school wasn't mandatory (pre-Great Depression.) Now that high school is mandatory most people assume their friends and family are graduating. Informing people about on paper is just something that hasn't quite died out yet.  My husband's best friend's family sent them out when their son graduated when our daughters did.  My husband (now 52) opened it and was confused.  He said the information about the party wasn't on it-they must've had a misprint.  I looked at it and explained that it's an old fashioned tradition to announce it and that some high schools still sell them to students, but usually it's only people who don't live near relatives who send them to elderly people.  It wasn't an invitation, that would come separately. He hadn't even heard of  the tradition. I got one for a distant cousin across the country once.

We graduated from public schools in 85 and 91 in PHX.  Our families didn't send out announcements.

Edited by Homeschool Mom in AZ
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