Evite: Your Invitation for Fun!

The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes

Do you like parties? Is half of the fun planning the party, choosing the theme, deciding on the menu?  Do you like designing custom invitations but hate the costs of printing and postage? Are you challenged by keeping track of RSVP’s?

What’s the part you like least about throwing a party? (For me it’s the clean up after the party, but I haven’t found an app to help with that yet…)

If you like designing invitations but need help tracking responses, check out Evite. If you throw parties, run a book club, Bunco group, or investment club, Evite will make the task of inviting people and keeping track of responses a snap!

Welcome to Evite!

Evite is a website where you can design custom invitations, email them, keep track of replies, and  plan your gathering. Evite isn’t just for parties, I am using it for the book club meeting at my house on Friday. You could use Evite for something as simple as a family Mother’s Day brunch or as big as a Big birthday party. If you need to organize a group of people to show up at an event, Evite is the site for you!

Sounds great! How do I get started?

Go to evite.com and register for an account. Then click on Create an Invitation. From here you can pick an event (Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day and Mother’s Day are the featured events now), including professional events, movie night, weekend getaway, bridal showers, watch the game, fundraisers, and many others. There are even invitations that you can customize for your special occasion if it isn’t covered by the dozens of choices on Evite.

After you decide upon your event, you can design the invitation. This is the fun part because they have loads of attractive and creative designs to choose from.

Next you fill in the details (date, time, location, etc.) and  enter the email addresses of your guests. If you host an event regularly, such as a book club, you will only have to enter the email addresses once. Evite will save your contacts so that you can easily invite the same group to another meeting later.

After you finish entering your guest list, you move on to the final step: your invitation options. You can choose to hide your guest list so others can’t see who is coming. I don’t recommend this unless you have a good reason to do so. Guests usually like to see who else is invited and/or coming to the party. They can even comment to each other on the site.

You have the option to allow your invitees to bring a guest (or not) and for them to let you know how many children will be attending. You can post your invitation on Facebook too. You can also choose to be notified when someone RSVP’s, which can be handy to keep track of who is attending.

After you send the invitation

After you send the invitation, Evite will notify you about the responses. Evite will also send you updates as you get close to the event telling you whose responses you have not yet received and asking if you want to send reminders to those people.

Other Evite Goodies

Evite can also help you plan the event. Evite provides ideas for themes, decorating, food, drinks, recipes and other suggestions.

As I was planning our book club meeting, I read Evite’s suggestions about what to do if people didn’t like the assigned book or if the discussion lags. Evite even gives helpful tips about how to organize a book club from the beginning.

From Evite’s site you can also send ecards or buy party supplies. Evite also has a page where they suggest gifts based upon the occasion, recipient and your price range.

iPhone App

Last month Evite launched an iPhone app. From the app, you can design an invitation, keep track of your responses and enable (or disable) Push Notifications (see, Apps: To Push or Not to Push?)

Evite does not yet have apps for other phones, but you can access the site through a mobile website: m.evite.com.

Video

For a quick demo, check out this YouTube video from Evite:

Sounds fantastic! How much for all of these services?

Evite is free. You don’t pay anything for their services. The site has advertising and you choose to buy party supplies and gifts from them, but you aren’t required to.

Party Time!

Now that you know about Evite, you can start planning your party and set the tone for fun even before the guests arrive. Easy, fun and free, three good reasons to use Evite for your next event!

Have you ever used Evite or received an invitation through Evite? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments section below!