<p>bulletandpima, LOVE the dog prop!!! Neither one of my kids want(ed) anything beyond the standard grad poses, but if they’d thought of taking in our dog…that would have gone over well!</p>
<p>Well DD is taking the other dog ( a little black and white cocker spaniel). SHe has inforemd because he mostly black with some white, she is themeing the picture with him to be in a mostly white dress with some black, and does not want it in color.</p>
<p>Telling you all…next yr you will get a gradzilla post also, but it will be the complete opposite. I will be pulling out my hair and bald for grad. She is a hoot, because her college decisions are based on size(wants it to have at least a football team and basketball team…she doesn’t know one thing about either sport, except how to socialize during the games), needs to be in the south, but in the mountains, and near a city. Any suggestions? Right now VA Tech is her top choice, and U Tenn. It use to be Clemson, but found out the dorms stink. We keep suggesting WVU, but because we suggested it, she won’t consider it. Gotta love that kid she always makes you laugh.</p>
<p>FYI, we do graduation parties, not because we want to make it a big event, but because we live hours away and we use it as a mini-family reunion. They all come from different states and stay for the weekend. Luckily the school gives 10 tickets for each family so we can take the grandparents and the g<em>dparents with us, which makes the family members happy. My sister was g</em>dmother to DS1, so she went for his, while my brother and his wife hung at the hotel pool until it was time for the party. My brother is g*dfather to DD so he will go next yr, while sis hangs back at the pool. Also true on Bullets side, his brother was for DS1, so his sister hung at the pool ly, she will now be going for DD while his brother hangs back.</p>
<p>We have luckily gotten this down to a science, so when DS 2 grads in 3 yrs, we will be able to do it in our sleep. The only wrench into the system will be DS1 will grad from college and commissioned into the AF a month earlier, so how do I do 2 parties within a month. Can’t cheat out DS2 if we did for the others, but also DS1’s is a bigger deal IMO. I got 3 yrs so I’ll worry about it then! I am sure some post in the future will have this scenario and it will be all solved with help from our friends on CC :)</p>
<p>“DD on the other hand, already has her outfits picked out for the pics, her props and types of poses she wants. She has known this since DS1 had his done 2 yrs ago.”</p>
<p>I wonder if this is regional, the posing for pictures with props?</p>
<p>I don’t think so, I use to, but we just got the announcement of our friends DD’s graduation and she had about 3 shots done. One was with cheerleading props, one in a dress and one in cap and gown.</p>
<p>I know for the South it is commonplace, at least in VA, NC, AL, and FLA, since all of our friends have sent them.</p>
<p>What I have noticed is that the announcements are much different. In the south, it is a small card that comes from the HS with the class of XX and the school logo, inside people put the wallets. For other places it is a larger card like (birthday card) the outside is filled with their poses and the inside is printed with the school crest and saying something like XXX school announces the graduation of >>> on the 6th of June, etc. If you turn it over, it actually has in fine print the info of the studio, like Life Touch (we had Life Touch in NC, and that was not an option). In our newest area, it almost looks like a wedding announcement, with their picture on it and the same info…XXX school announces, but then they add what school they will be attending in the fall. I will not be buying them. I have already told DD this. To me now it looked like bragging and asking for gifts. She knows we didn’t send announcements out for DS, instead we sent invites to a party. She understands there is a difference. Side note at work last week, I received on the same day one of these announcements, it stated the time, date of graduation and where the child was going to attend, my boss(65 yrs old) calls me in, and asks me, is this an invite or announcement. I said its an announcement, because if it was an invite there would be a ticket to enter, and where a party would be held). He replied in other words, please send a gift! I smiled and walked away, he said wait, are you sending a gift? I replied no, I haven’t seen them in almost 2 yrs and wouldn’t know them if I fell on top of them. He asked why did she send it then, I said because it came with the package and felt the need to send it.</p>
<p>I think this is a trend we will start seeing more of in the future. Parents will buy it because every other parent is, the new Wedding cottage industry for photographers.</p>
<p>“I guess that to me, graduating high school doesn’t feel like enough if an accomplishment to warrant telling people about it. It’s normal and expected, barring special circumstances.”</p>
<p>I agree. My kids felt that way, and I felt that way when I was in high school.</p>
<p>I believe we should not make it into a mini-wedding, but still acknowledge it.</p>
<p>Bullet and I enjoy hosting parties, so it is just a reason to have a party, but we keep it on the scale it should be. We even did this when they were younger for religious events. Their 1st communion were big deals, but when it rolled around for confirmation, it was assumed and all we did was a nice dinner. Matter of fact next week is the last of our children’s confirmation, asked DS2 what he wanted to do for dinner that night and he said Dad’s (Bullet) homemade meatballs and manicotti. It will only be us and my mother, nobody else. When they had their 1st communion we had a party. I always feel bad because other kids get these grandiose parties, bouquets and gifts, whereas, ours get a hug and their patron saint medal. However, they at least understand the importance, because on test days they run around the house asking me to put on their medals 
. DS1 broke his chain at college and the only gift he asked for for his birthday was a new chain and to get it before mid-terms!</p>
<p>For me and most of my friends, having a kid graduate from high school isn’t such a huge accomplishment that it deserves a formal announcement. We bought the minimum number (5) and D2 put one in a scrap book with other high school memorabilia. D1 went to a Friends school and IIRC the school didn’t offer graduation announcements.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen the kind of grad announcements Bullet described above. (I’m from New England–MA.)</p>
<p>In our case, with family living in disparate parts of the country, we also have used D and S’s graduations (HS and college) as mini-family reunions, too, as mentioned above.</p>
<p>The last one was the most fun (in New Orleans!) where 16 relatives were “crawling all over the city”, per my text message to S who was the lucky recipient of all that attention. We had a blast–great ceremony, a terrific champagne party, and plenty of good meals. So although I agree that HS in particular isn’t as huge as the college graduation, for us it has turned into a really great reason to get everybody together.</p>
<p>I’m really glad we’ve done this–makes for lots of good photos and additional family bonding :)</p>
<p>I’ve never seen the kind of announcements bulletandpima described above, either. Which is why I asked if it was regional. I can’t imagine wasting my money on these announcements unless for some reason my kids are dying for them. It just seems very odd to me to have to “announce” a hs graduation to others. I can’t even imagine doing it for college, either, to be honest. </p>
<p>I enjoy doing things for special occasions. I hosted a dinner with our extended family when my twins graduated from 8th grade, and I just did a little party for my son’s confirmation, and I like nice invitations / stationery – but I confess, the idea of hs graduation announcements just don’t cut it for me. It seems like a made-up Hallmark thing to me, done just to commercialize an event. I’d make up my own nice invitation to a graduation party at my home before I’d spend my money on graduation announcements or pictures in cap and gown. I can’t really imagine I’d display pictures of them in cap and gown around my house, would I?? Other than maybe some fun informal pictures that I snapped myself, but not posed ones.</p>
<p>Curiouser-
I want all your NOLA pointers and notes in a few years, please!! Sounds like you had a blast!</p>
<p>I like that idea, curioser! I just don’t see the hs announcements as being the tone I’d want to set. I’d do my own invitation in my own style inviting people to a party in honor of XXX before I’d send something from the school. IOW, I’d rather invite people to a party than inform them that XYZ High School is announcing that ABC is graduating, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>I think it really comes down to the regions. Do your kids do multiple shots and at only 1 photographer’s studio? Our kids do, they are sent a notice to contact this studio to set up an appt. They then have the packages that you can choose from. I have always bought the cheapest one. You select your shots and when the package arrives, it arrives with the announcements.</p>
<p>DD is a rising sr, so the school has started the process, we have a choice of 2 studios, and they both are life touch, but have different packages. However, both have the announcements in them, they are just 2 different styles. Since I don’t send out announcements, I will be going with whomever is cheapest.</p>
<p>I do not have any professional posed pics of DS in cap and gown. We bought the two shots of him, one is him standing in his khackis against the 6 ft tall 07 in a lt blue (very lt, close to white) background. The other is him on the floor leaning against the 07 with myrtle laying at his feet. The only pic I have him in his cap and gown is on graduation day with us right after the ceremony, and that is in his photo album. DS was so laid back he didn’t buy a yr book. Luckily DD did, so we can always laugh at in yrs to come when she pulls out the yr book.</p>
<p>The one thing I did keep, and still have not gotten around to framing is his gown, and the shawl type thing they wear around the collar. It is my intention someday to shadow box it, along with a personalized baby blanket still never unwrapped that has his date, time and weight of his birth, and when he leaves us, I will turn his room into a family heirloom room. I have already framed the communion flags that they made (our church hung them at the end of the family pew), and their personalized names using Asian symbols. I am wierd that way. I have made the most interesting memomentos. I also buy every yr a xmas ornament, so when they get married, one of my xmas gifts for them will be all of their ornamanents since they were born, I remember Bullets and my 1st xmas and it was just traditional glass ornaments and how it depressed me because we were in England and our families were in NJ, it just didn’t feel like xmas, not being very careful handling an ornament that I made when I was 5.</p>
<p>Back on topic, has anybody incurred this. Our new school (moved in Aug) is having the kids write application essays now, as a jr. They will be graded as an English grade, and the teacher will hold them to use as a resource for reccomendation purposes. DD has spent the weekend with friend (about 8 hrs) writing them. They are also to supply manilla envelopes (8 x11) with their name and colleges that they will be applying to. I don’t mind the assignment and think it is a great idea, but why name the colleges? DS1 had changed about 50% of his choices during his rising sr yr summer. It also seems to be taking in the fact that the student will ask that Eng teacher for a rec, plus it puts more on the teachers plate. What if the student doesn’t like the teacher. This is across the board for every 11th grade teacher, regardless if they are STD, Honors, IB, AP or ICSE (we have all of those programs)</p>
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<p>I agree–graduations are a great excuse for family to gather. I’d rather spend my money on a family event than on photos and announcments. We live on the east coast and both my family and dh’s live in the midwest. They came east for both kids’ high school graduations and for D1’s college graduation. For D1’s graduation we had a “destination dinner” for our immediate families at an amazing up-scale restaurant. My mil was sure she’d be uncomfortable because it was too fancy and too expensive. The wait-staff must have felt her unease because from the moment she set foot in the place, the staff went out of its way to make her feel comfortable. She even got a personal tour of the kitchen from one of the chef-owners! We had a great night and my mil talked about her “tour” years afterward.</p>
<p>I remember having a huge discussion about graduation around this time last year with a bunch of my friends.</p>
<p>We all came to the conclusion that the ceremony itself seemed like a huge hassle; we had to be there almost 2 hours early, go through massive security (I went to a very large urban high school), etc.</p>
<p>And yet we still had to go through all the hoopla.</p>
<p>We decided quickly that graduation is not for the graduate so much, but for the family to be able to share in our success. We all would’ve been happy with just getting our diplomas sent to us via mail and celebrating with each other, but then where would our family have been?</p>
<p>OP–and anyone else who experiences this if this topic is no longer in effect for OP–this may be a time for some guilt tripping, because she may not realize how important this is to your family. Explain to her that you have all watched her grow and succeed, and you deserve to be able to share her good news and celebrate. It’s not just about her.</p>
<p>What a great idea. AS I stated earlier, in 3 yrs I will have a conflict because DS1 will grad from college 1 mo before DS2, and we have the same problem with everybody living hours away. I can’t ask all of the family to drive hours twice within a four week space, and I want them to feel special. The grandparents will do both without a doubt, and we have already set a precedent with the other 2, so I feel we need to be fair. Having an upscale dinner seems like a great way to celebrate. Let’s be honest, all of their friends are going to scatter back home to other states, so it isn’t like you can have a party that the friends will come anyway.</p>
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<p>Imagine being there 2 hrs early and sitting in the NC sun in June. I flat ironed my hair for 30 minutes, why I don’t know, because 3 hrs later when we took pics with him after graduation it was all curls again :p</p>
<p>Anybody that has a salutorian or valedictorian, please remind them to make it funny and short. Nobody remembers the speech and all the guests sitting in the stands wants to hear is their kids name. No offense, but that is the truth. To parents, from a parent that is now at the end of the alphabet(maiden name was the beginning), please follow the instructions of not clapping or cheering, esp. in a class of 800+, it just drags it out, you will have to sit for what feels like eons after hooping and hollering until every name is called, just as the end of the alphabet had to also sit. I give DS1’s school credit, they warned the students to warn the parents, they warned the parents before the students marched in, they warned both guests and students before giving out the diplomas, that names will be taken and that the graduate would not receive their diploma that day, but it would be mailed in August. They took names and held true to it. The only one that was given a pass, was a victim of a shooting that walked with canes for the first time since the accident(9 mos. earlier) The entire class shouted, stood up on chairs, and the audience went wild.</p>
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<p>Too bad! 
We were lucky enough to have a night ceremony…started at 7, the grads had to be there at 5:30.</p>
<p>Ours was at 9:30 a.m., the grads had to be there at 8 a.m., we were told to get a good seat be there by 8. I carry the smallest purse in the world, wallet on a string as the family calls it. I took a book bag filled with frozen water bottles that day and pitched the purse. It was on the football field, no shade and by 9 the bottles were cold water. Parents of grads were taking the grandparents under the bleachers for shade. THEY HAD 2 AMBULANCES on site, both left with heat stroke victims before it started. </p>
<p>Luckily for DD it is better run. The students arrive 90 minutes earlier and are all bussed to the venue to practice. The parents buses start going 30 minutes later. The students get bussed out first after the ceremony, unless the parent drove to the venue and they can leave from there with the parent. The parents get bussed out after the students.</p>
<p>I also like the fact the 10 tickets are given and it is assigned seating not first come first serve, so there is no rush to get there for the best seat. It is a pavillion, which means that you all get special views. They walk down the middle aisles of the parents, and if you are on the sides you have a closer view to the platform to see them being handed the diploma.</p>
<p>I also like the idea, we just board the bus (it is not a school bus, but commercial) and go straight to our assigned seat, no need to fight for the best seat. It reduces so much stress. Now your only worry is to make sure you are there to catch the last bus leaving the school. It is done like a bus schedule, they give times of departure.</p>
<p>I have never seen a HS graduation announcement, and never received one. Our HS’s yearbook has kids submit two photos, one to be used for their senior portrait and the other in a collage-like thing. Some kids have studio portraits, but many–at least half–submit photos taken by friends or family. I took the picture my S chose to submit. The pictures are never in cap and gown because they are due months before such items are received.</p>
<p>The custom in our town is that kids go to “Project Graduation” shortly after the ceremony and reception. They all bring a change of clothes in a plastic bag to graduation, for reasons that will become clear. They are each given a plastic bag with a souvenir towel, snacks, and a bottle of water. They are not allowed to bring anything else: no cell phones, no containers of any kind that might possibly hold alcohol or any other illicit items.</p>
<p>First, they are all loaded into yellow school buses that parade slowly down the main street of the town with the kids hanging out of the windows, accompanied by blaring fire engines. Friends and family and community members line up on both sides of the street and bombard them with water balloons, spray them with hoses hooked up to houses and even hydrants, and blast them with squirt guns of all sizes and any other water delivery system that can be devised. The parade turns around in the center of the other small town that makes up our district, and runs the gauntlet again. It’s a hoot, a real small town ritual scene, especially since the American flags are usually still up from Memorial Day. (The day my S graduated in was in the high 80s and sunny. After surviving near heat prostration in the unairconditioned gym where temperatures must have exceeded 100F, the water extravaganza was welcomed by all! )</p>
<p>Then the kids are taken to a location in another town where they change into the dry clothes they brought, and are loaded onto nice tour buses. They then drive to an undisclosed location, usually in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where they have dinner and party, then they are driven to a second undisclosed location where they party further, then they are driven to a famous location–Portland Head Light–where they take a class picture at dawn, and they drive back to our town to be served breakfast at around 6:30 AM at the UCC church in the center of town, right by the high school. (It’s one of those classic northern New England small town centers, with a white clapboard church, a war memorial, an old cemetary, and not much else.) Then their parents pick them up and they go home and crash for most of the day! </p>
<p>A lot of kids have parties at their houses during the following week, and all the rest of the kids make the rounds. That, plus the lead-up events at which they appear in cap & gown–Class Day, at which prizes are announced, and a Candlelight celebration, at which kids perform musically and do readings the the like, make the whole thing quite festive. (Also, taking the prizes and so forth out of graduation makes it shorter, for which one and all were profoundly grateful last year!)</p>
<p>‘…in 3 yrs I will have a conflict because DS1 will grad from college 1 mo before DS2, and we have the same problem with everybody living hours away. I can’t ask all of the family to drive hours twice within a four week space, and I want them to feel special.’</p>
<p>Two years ago we hosted a celebration for 2 college and 1 HS grad. The actual events were attended by immediate family and one local grandparent.
The party was mid-summer, with out of town family, out of town and local friends of ours and the kids. It was a mini reunion for the college grads some of whom hadn’t seen each other since the actual graduation. It also served as a mini farewell for the high school grad friends who would be starting off to their new adventures. Everyone had a great time.</p>