Curious to hear posters’ thoughts on what you and your family do re: graduation announcements and what you think is acceptable and what is not.
Personally, we don’t send them out. Those we are close to know our child is graduating. If we want them to be at the graduation ceremony, they have been asked and arrangements are made long before announcements come out. If they want to send a gift, that’s up to them. Only grandparents have done so and that’s okay.
Obviously, many do send them out. It’s a big business, apparently.
I did get one in the mail just now from an extended family member that went a little beyond ones I’ve received in the past. Like I do for all my nieces/nephews, I had already planned on sending a nice check and a congratulatory card. What takes me aback a little about this one is that included with the announcement is a pre-addressed return envelope (no postage unfortunately 
) making it feel to me like this is a total money/gift grab. Is this common these days? I’ve never seen that before in my 50+ years. Of course, I’ll be sending a long a check anyway but it comes across as a tad gauche.
More than a tad gauche! But we don’t send them out either. Just not a thing that’s done up here in my area.
Nothing at all. Our expectation was that the kids would graduate. Immediate family attended, kid got a gift (and college tuition).
We designed and order some simple, minimalist, and humorous ones online for my daughter to hand to her friends and teachers, and we will send to family and close friends to honor the event. We expect no gifts. Besides my husband and me, our sister-in-law is the only family close by who can actually attend.
We ordered the smallest amount of announcements for each kid for high school graduations, just to have a memento, we did not send them out. We did send out invites to the open house.
There were no announcements even discussed for D’s college graduation. I think I sent out an email with the live feed link and that was about it.
Is there any chance this particular kid (or the parents) thought they were being helpful by including the envelope?
Never even thought about it, certainly didn’t know it was a “thing”. But there are more than 20 of us travelling the five hours and renting two houses so we can have a celebratory weekend! Siblings and spouses, parents, grandparents and a cousin.
We ordered some very informal graduation announcement photo cards from Snapfish but they haven’t arrived yet. I have a list of family, friends and past special teachers to give/send them to. I would never send them expecting any gifts. I will include her address so they can send a greeting as several have already asked for that.
We did not do them.
I have a friend who has three children. I received high school graduation announcements for all three, college graduation announcements for all three, and grad school graduation announcements for the two that got master’s degrees. Parties for all of them all rounds with no indication not to bring gifts. Just too much, IMO, but I think it may depend on a family’s culture and traditions. In our family, all gift-giving and expectation of gift-receiving within extended family suspends at high school graduation and is picked up again once when the adult child marries. So, that’s what is “normal” to me.
@NEPatsGirl That’s great that you have so much family attending. Sounds like it will be a fun time!
Ordered the minimum from D15’s school & bought Harry Potter stamps for them, but the whole batch is still in a drawer unsent. #parentingfail #notthefirst
No one does college grad announcements in my city in the Midwest.
We had grad parties for the kids so did photo grad announcement/invitations.
We didn’t do announcements either. Feels like a money grab to me too.
Put up a thing on facebook. Those closest to us knew anyway.
No one ever went to my graduations besides my parents and partner.
Oh man, did I learn a hard lesson on this! My family never sent out announcements, so it never occurred for me to do that until I learned my ex-MIL (with whom I have a good relationship) was mightily PO’d that I hadn’t sent a graduation announcement. We patched it up and I still don’t send them. ? But I make sure she know she is invited!
Lol this is surprising to me. No one orders them through the school, but everyone gets them from Shutterfly or something similar. My kid ordered 200. I probably have at least 25 that I received in the mail, plus God only knows how many my kids were handed at school. Everyone does them, everyone has graduation parties that last 3-4 hours. Pretty much starting Friday night through Sunday afternoon for 2 weekends we all do the circuit, stopping by for a sandwich or piece of cake. Or beer, the good ones are in the evening and have beer for the adults. ?
Not just our school, I get them from friends in the Catholic School and surrounding towns too. Generally the kids who stop by don’t bring s gift, adults do but usually in the $10-25 range. Mostly cash and checks but some gifts. But I think the total take S that graduated last year had was about $2,000, including a couple big checks from relatives. And party cost me $500 doing everything myself at our house.
So a big celebration usually, but nothing formal and only token gifts expected.
@dadof4kids What region of the country do you live in? And I assume you are talking about HS graduations? Do people do the same for college in your circle?
My husband is a military retiree and I think announcements are a big deal in the military community. Last week I received an announcement from a young woman who’s graduating from a military academy. When she was born, her home was just a few houses down from mine on a military base. Her dad flew in the same squadron as my husband, and her mom was a dear friend of mine. I wasn’t thinking, “Money grab,” when I received the announcement. I was thinking, “This is beautiful.”
@doschicos apologies if I missed this but were you referencing high school or college graduation?
Three kids here. No college graduation announcements or fuss outside of our immediate family who just enjoyed the day together - the ceremony and a nice dinner afterwards.
For high school, we did not do any of the official announcements or school related printed bling. I just don’t care for it and the kids didn’t want it. For the first two we did send out postcards to family and friends we were inviting to a grad open house of sorts - and on that announcement we stated what their next steps were ("will be attending so and so school to study so and so). We don’t have a huge family that we would invite and limited friends so this was a small mailing.
My youngest did not want a grad party of any sort and opted for a trip instead. Atta girl. We did not announcement or mailing of any kind. She received very few cards or acknowledgment of her graduation from friends, close neighbors, family. This made me realize even more that without the invite to an event, most people won’t choose to acknowledge a graduation - and really made me sort of glad to not put people in the spot to feel they needed to come to a party or send anything.
And our trip was fantastic!!!
" I wasn’t thinking, “Money grab,” when I received the announcement. I was thinking, “This is beautiful.”"
Me, too, until I saw the return, pre-addressed envelope. 
@abasket College. I should have made that clear.