The most daunting task of hosting a party is managing the invitations. Planning for the food, drinks and all other arrangements depend on the number of people attending the party. I have been receiving a lot of Evite invitations and was wondering how it all works out. Recently, I hosted my son’s birthday party using Evite and here are my observations.

Create an Account

First and foremost, you need an account to get started with. You can create an account at Evite. Once you fill out the registration form and Submit, Evite will send you an email to your registered id. You have to follow the steps listed in the email to complete the registration. You will also receive your login details in the first email, which you may want to save for future use.

Filling up the registration form and completing the registration is familiar and similar to any other account creation process.

Choose a Design

The next step is to login and choose a design and theme for your party. The designs available are not many. You cannot customize the designs. They have limited options in the design. You have to select the best one that suits your need.

I have changed the image of the theme later to make it more personal!

Enter Details

After you choose a design, you have to enter all the details about the event such as location, time, host name, party title and a personal message to the guests. Evite automatically includes a map of the location with the invite.

There are multiple options available such as including the end time, asking the guests to bring something, adding music to the invitation, making the invitation recurring, polling the guests or asking suggestions from guests and so on.

Add Guests

To add guests, add the email addresses of your contacts separated by comas. For the first time, you have to enter manually the email addresses from your contacts on other emails. For the subsequent events, you can copy the addresses from the contact list.

You can check the other options such as to indicate the number of kids attending or notifying when a guest replies and so on. You can customize the reply options suited to the party instead of the standard Yes, No or Maybe.

Send the Invite

Before sending the invite, you can customize the message for the guests and preview the message. You can save the draft to continue at your own convenience. Once you send the invite, you will receive an email from the Evite confirming the message.

Pros and Cons

While Evite facilitates the process of inviting the guests, it sends multiple emails which may be irritating for the guests and you too. You can view the invite and view the responses from the guests. You may continue planning the arrangements based on the responses.

You will know whether the guests have viewed your invite or not.  But, sometimes you may be stuck with the guests who have not viewed at all or who have viewed but not responded. You may have to make some phone calls depending on the responses.

You can send a reminder message to the guests who have not responded. Once the event is done, you can upload your event pictures and ask the guests to upload the pictures which they have taken at the party. You have to download an application to upload or download images to or from Evite.

Evite does not work well with Google Chrome. Some of the features such as uploading your own image or uploading the party pictures work only in Internet Explorer.

So, next time you plan an event you may try Evite for its cool features. Its a simple tool for our tech-savvy friends. 🙂