This is about as far off the topic of college admissions as you can get
We are planning a get-together and are going to use evite to invite our guests. I have question that falls under practicality and etiquette. If you are inviting a couple and they both have email addresses, do you just pick one of them and assume they can answer for both? Or do you send out an invitation to both? With a physical invite Iād just send one to āMr. and Mrs. Xā, but email addresses are not on a per-couple basis.
Sending out just one invite to the couple means implicitly deciding who speaks for both of them. But it simplifies the responses on evite; if you get back an acceptance for 2 then you know who is coming.
Sending out a pair lets them both see the invite, you havenāt picked anyone as the āprimaryā. But it means that you expect them to decide who responds and ignore the 2nd; or do some adjustment to the āhow many attendingā number if they both accept and put 2. And inviting them separately via email also feels a little strange; I wouldnāt do that with physical invites put into the mail, Iād send one to a couple.
Anyway, turning away from the earthshaking issues usually discussed on the forum, I was curious what people do when sending out email invites to a couple.
Iāve noticed among my family members, mostly itās the female that keeps the calendar and responds to items about scheduling anything for the family. Mostly Iāve gotten the invitations for myself and H as well as myself, H, and our two grown kids who live in LA and DC. When H gets an invitation, he hands it to me and asks (or if its an evite just asks, are we available? Do we want to attend?
Or put both names in any subject line. (Unless the invite itself can be customized to include both names.) I wouldnāt be comfy with any invite sent to one of us, with zero mention of the other.
I think one is fineāI would assume that both will be mentionedāCan you and X be there? And yes, I think that if you know both equally, send it to the woman. Sheās probably the one keeping track.
And just a comment: you CANNOT be overly trivial in the Parent Cafe. These kinds of questions are the lifeblood of this forum
Which one of you is sending the invitations? I think Iād split it because some of our couple friends became friends through my husband and others through me. Iād have my husband email his friends and cc the spouse. Iād do the same with my friends. But I wouldāt ask how many are attending. Iād say, āwe hope to see you and Janeā and āplease let us know if you can attend byā¦ā
Yes, I always try to have a date by which I want responses so we can ācount nosesā and call laggards to get an accurate headcount. If I have both emails, itās not that much extra work to send the email to each of the people and I may do that or I may just send to one (depends on my mood and if I am on phone vs desktop ā less lazy with desktop because I can see everything more readily).
I would send it to the one that the host is closer to. I have received some evites and so has H, not to the same functions. I am assuming that there is something in the evite (I have never used it to send invitations - I use USPS) that would indicate which family members are included.
This is hilariousāmy husbands firm has a retreat every year and the organizer always gets āin troubleā for not sending SOās the information on activities/dinners that need RSVPs directly. Somehow info just doesnāt get shared as well as it should or calendar dates get missed. Shouldnāt happen of course but it always does.
It helps avoid the āI told you the party was tonightā āNo you didnāt, I donāt know anything about it.ā
I vote for one subject line (including both parties) and two e-mail addresses. That way your (and their) bases are covered. E-mails are a bit different than having the invitation in print as part of the mail where both will see it automatically.
