College is pretty low key. I’m taking about HS. Middle of the country in a state you may have driven though or flown over but probably never visited on purpose!
We didn’t order announcements for my daughter’s college graduation. I did just get one in the mail for one of her friends the other day… no return envelope, no party. I’ll send her a card and check if I remember to get around to it. But I don’t get the impression that it’s done much any more here between Facebook and other electronic ways of letting people know that sort of news.
My D graduates from college next Friday. We ordered no announcements. Her grandparents and parents will attend graduation. D even gave her brother a pass on attending as 1) he broke his foot two weeks ago and is hobbling around on a giant boot and 2) there will be more room in our car for her extraneous “stuff” without him.
We have a large extended family (she has three first cousins graduating from college this month and at least 14 have graduated in the past 10 years) and no one has ever sent announcements. We all know who is graduating. None of us sends gifts to the nieces and nephews unless they’re godchildren, with the exception of one very generous SIL who sends a check to every graduate.
D has a friend at school who is a terrific photographer. She has made $2,000+ in the last two months taking photos of grads to use for their announcements. Some of D’s friends expect to receive $1,500+ in gifts from aunts, uncles and family friends.
My kid will likely get $50 from the very generous aunt, $50 from another aunt who is her godmother, and a generous monetary gift from her grandparents (which my dad plans to suggest that she use this for “fun” and then save the same amount in her 401 K to help max out her contribution). D and I are completely fine with this. In fact, she recently mentioned (when telling me about her photographer friend’s side gig) that she’d be embarrassed to send announcements as she views them as a total gift grab. But that’s based on our large family, and we understand that others think differently.
Sent out announcements for both HS and college but only to close family and a very few friends.
For kid 1, when he ordered his graduation gown, and cap…he also was “ordering” his six tickets to the event and 6 printed announcements. They were just part of the package. We kept one for ourselves and tossed the rest. We had a rather nice celebration for the family and friends when he did his final senior recital. No one was invited to the actual graduation.
For kid 2, we invited the grandparents and aunts and uncles to the graduation. It was not a gift grab…and we knew who was coming. Some sent gifts and others didn’t. No announcements were sent at all.
For the recital event and the graduation, all the info was sent via email…with email RSVP.
I ordered the minimum for S1. I think I sent them to the grandparents as a souvenir. It was in that time frame just before my heart attack and I remember nothing. I was still in the hospital when S1 graduated. DH flew out for graduation, noone else. S2 stayed here with me as local competent family member and advocate.
I don’t recall getting a mailing about announcements for S2. He ordered his cap and gown, so maybe they are in a box somewhere. The professional pics for departmental graduation (the only time he walked) were terrible – no flash used, so they were blurry. DH and I were at S2’s graduation.
Grandparents might have sent a very modest check, but since S1 and S2 both had their own bank accounts, I wouldn’t have been involved. No graduation parties. We took S2 out for dinner.
But no, we didn’t send out announcements or throw a party. Not our style, and we didn’t do it for their Bar Mitzvahs, either.
Facebook announcement with a few pics. That’s it.
I cannot recall receiving a college graduation announcement. Family and friends who have followed college career know about graduation but no formal announcement. Wife and I will go. Daughter (grad’s sister) is working so she won’t be at graduation.
I expect that son (or likely his girlfriend) will post pics from graduation on some type of social media. Wife and I won’t because we don’t do social media.
For high school, my daughter wanted a party so we sent out invites. Son didn’t so we didn’t for his.
Just got one from H’s best friend’s S for his MBA. Our kids never sent any out. We’ve gotten a few from family and friends for HS and college, but no uniformity. We send checks to those we know of.
@doschicos really surprised by the self-addressed envelope! Could it have been meant as an rsvp envelope for an invitation that wasn’t clear?
@3SailAway Definitely not an invitation. It is an announcement. However, I have a feeling that the announcement package might have included inner envelopes in which the announcement was supposed to be stuffed but in this case the decision was made to repurpose them as a return envelope by not putting the announcement inside and instead putting an address label for the graduate on them. Frankly, I’m perplexed by the whole thing as I haven’t seen it before.
Did they put a stamp on the return envelope? 
Nope. Unfortunately not. 
This is pretty much the exact thing that Facebook is good for.
That may be the case as our son’s invitation package arrived with the same number of announcements included. I wasn’t sure what to do with them as it didn’t occur to me to send announcements, just invitations to those who are attending. Heaven forbid anyone think we were asking for money or gifts. Now I’m not sure what to do. Probably safer to just skip it.
The only announcement we have ever received that had us SMH…for a college graduation that was VERY close to our home. Some of the aunts and uncles were invited, some received announcements. We thought it odd that we lived so close and didn’t get invited to the event. The others did not attend. This one relative sends announcements for everything…high school graduations, college, grad school. We got an invitation once to a sweet 16 party from her with a note saying “we know it’s probably too far for you to come, but we wanted you to know.” We didn’t go.
When our kids were graduating HS, the school provided invitations (6 invitations and max. 6 guests) for families to mail to their chosen guests; I gave one to my BIL&SIL, our only family, and one to my S’s piano teacher. I kept one and threw away the rest. I did not send graduation announcements - I would have been a cold day in hell before my kids did not graduate, LOL! As for tacky, it is much like wedding announcements - only invite and announce to those you would hope to show up, otherwise, it’s just a ‘gift grab’, imo.
We sent them out. I made my own on a photo site and sent them to ~20 people - grandparents, extended family, former daycare/sitter, former elderly neighbor, etc. I’m not on Facebook. They are people who seemingly like to hear from us. In the case of our former neighbor, when we visit, she has every single one of my kids’ photo christmas cards on display. But I don’t expect a nickle from anyone. I get them from others and I always enjoy hearing from people. I don’t feel any pressure to send anything.
Yeah, we got “freebies” (for big private school tuition $$ ) for he high school grads. /kept one as a memento and chucked the rest.
We celebrate with a nice dinner and give a gift but my kids certainly should graduate from high school and college. They have enough privilege in many ways that it is a given.
High school graduation announcements are very popular where I live (NoVA). We ordered the minimum for our kids and sent to immediate family only. Didn’t buy/send for college graduations.
D had a party for HS graduation, but we did not expect gifts. S did not want a party at all. Both of my kids attended several HS grad parties but it seemed like mostly girls had them, very few boys.