party on

Party season is almost here--personally I think "back to school" means back to the social calendar...people are in town again after summer travel and well, its time.  While I am all for an impromptu gathering, I also love the planning of a party almost as much as having it, starting with the invitation.  And intimate dinner or large holiday gathering, the way you invite your guests is important.
Invitations set the tone for what kind of shindig you are planning, the occasion, style and size.  Evite has long been the favorite among party planners--you can design your own invite, customizing it to make it personal, download email addresses from your address book, and track who received the invite, when they viewed it and their reply.  And its free.  There are other electronic invitation websites similar to Evite--I used Pingg one year for my son's birthday and it was easy to download a photo of the birthday boy and customize it.  But I still was looking for something a little different than Evite.  Something with a little more panache.
Paperless Post is correspondence with class.  The invitations are lovely with a ton of choices for every type of festivity, plus awesome graphics and easy to use design tools.  The feature I loved the best is that it is interactive--the invitation has the look of traditional card stock & moves with a click, the envelope turning and the invitation sliding out for viewing.  Clicking the next arrow leads you to a response card and you are done.
One of the best features as a hostess or host is that you can track what happens to your invitation after you send it.  Paperless Post notifies the host as each invite is sent & opened, and most importantly if it was undeliverable.  Rather than just sitting looking like it was an unopened invitation like other websites, Paperless Post undeliverable section alerts you to any problems.  And saves you from possible social mishaps later.  Other tools include setting up an automatic reminder to guests, creating spreadsheets, tracking replies, printing lists or sending messages.
All this classy stuff comes with a small cost, although when you sign up to use the site you get 25 free "stamps"--one stamp mails one invite, and 10 "coins" which you can use to add premium designs, logos etc.  Adding say, 30 stamps is a mere $5.00 --still much cheaper than a traditional paper invite.
I adore the look of Paperless Post and well, you don't have to ask me twice to look for an occasion for having a party.  I believe that there are definitely certain times when no less than a paper invitation will do, however I like being old fashioned about correspondence from time to time. Still, I am still certain that the statement you make will be a stylish one with a Paperless Post invite.  Super easy.  Now the hard part...what to wear.... :)