Choosing the Right Invitation for Your Child's Birthday

Choosing a theme is the first step in party planning for your child's birthday. The next step is inviting the special people in you child's life to help celebrate your child's special day. In order to invite people to the party, you must first choose on what type of invitation you wan to send out. There are several different options to choose.

· Packaged Invitations. You can buy these at Wal-Mart, Party America, or any drug or craft store. These types of invitations tend to be a little more expensive. You will also have to fill out all the information for the party, which can be very time consuming. Most often you will be able to find pre-packaged invitations to match the theme of your child's party.

· Printable Invitations. If you have a computer and a good printer, printing your own invitations might be the best option for you. There are tons of websites out there like kidprintables.com and Dtk-kids.com that you can visit and they will let you print invitations right from the site. Many websites will even let you personalize the invitations for free.

· Handmade Invitations. These are by far the most personal invitations you can send out. If you decide to add pictures and ribbons or decorate the invitation with other items, these can get to be quite time consuming.

· E-mail Invitations or Evites. These are perhaps the easiest way to invite people to your child's birthday. With e-mail invites you don't have to worry about investing a lot of time or putting a lot of work into them. There's no postage charge and no envelope licking, which is no fun! The negative aspect of evites is some people may consider them impersonal and tacky, and not everyone emails.

A few things that you should remember to include on the invitations are the date and time of the party and where the party will be held. Let parents know if there is a specific theme to the birthday and whether or not you expect them to stay at the party or just drop their child off, if dropping them off is the case let them know what time to arrive for pick up. In the past I have let parents know what food will be served in case of food allergy concerns. Put an RSVP on the invitation, this will help you to better plan for the number of children that will be attending and prepare enough food and snacks for everyone.

Whichever type of invitation you decide to use, let you child help. Whether it's adding a sticker to the envelope or pressing send on the computer, let your child get involved in planning their special day!