Halloween Invitations

I'm not knocking Evite - it's convenient! cute graphics! I have a head count! - but there is something about Evite that feels a little forced. Sometimes when a friend sends me an Evite, I'll sit for ten minutes trying to think of an unoffensive excuse to put next to my name in the "Not attending" column (when the real reason is that I can see that your stupid co-worker Travis just RSVPed and spending a night listening to him tell off-color jokes is my personal version of hell.)

Generally, if I'm taking the time and spending the money to have a legendary shin-dig, I want the invitation to reflect that. If it's something less legendary, like a backyard BYOB party, I'll buy some hot dogs and send an Evite. If you are planning a fancy, high-budget affair such as a wedding, there are whole books of etiquette about the invitations you'll need, and I'm not getting into all that now.

The next party I'm hosting is the best of all theme parties - HALLOWEEN!! We are expecting 45 people from multiple circles of friends. This is our second annual Halloween party and the pressure is on to make it even better than last year's event (which was SUPER FUN, especially considering that we were first-timers who didn't have many decorations yet!)

Invites needed to go out to 60 people or so. Personally, I would rather spend my party budget on better booze instead of stamps. So we did the ecological, economical thing and created a PDF invitation to email to our friends.

PROS to the E-MAILED PDF/JPEG:

• You can also print the PDF and hang it up at work, eliminating the awkward "co-worker party" email, or pass out a flyer to your neighbors.

• It's cooler and more memorable than just typing a few lines of text in an email or text message.


• The invitation will continued to be formatted that way you want, even if friends forward it to other people.


• Design will give the guests a clue about what to expect at the party.
  

Below are my invitations from this year's and last year's parties. They were both designed in Adobe Illustrator (with some Photoshop for good measure). You can also use a program like Microsoft Publisher to create similar effects. We found some inspiration by doing an Image search on Google.

Our party will be a Thriller!

We were in the middle of watching Season 1 of Dexter when we designed this one.