The Post Office urged everyone to consider the benefits of their new first-class postal service, as they guaranteed to deliver first class mail overnight. Well, those were the days.

If you’re posting off your party invitations today, at a price around six times the original price, not taking inflation into account, you might be lucky if arrives early next week. Still, once we’ve had our little moan about the postal service at least we can have some fun with the party invitations themselves. Whether you’re looking at party invitations for children’s parties, where you can choose between Thomas the Tank Engine, Peppa Pig, Toy Story and a dozen other popular varieties of children’s shows and themes, or whether you’re looking to send invitations to adults, we have a wide range to choose from, all of which are certain to cheer up anyone still suffering from confusion as to what the point of the first class postal service really is.

If you are sending out invitations by post and you need an RSVP, then sometimes it’s worth popping in either an e-mail address or a phone number, suggesting that the person gives you a call or drops you an e-mail to save time and postage. It is surprising just how many people don’t use an RSVP because of the extra time it takes to sort out an envelope, a stamp, and to get to a post box.

These days an e-mail RSVP or even a text RSVP is a much more convenient solution, and something that people can do almost immediately your invitation arrives. That gives you a better indication of who is going to be there, and who can’t make it.

For fun parties, try adding in just a little bit of party confetti to your creation. Whether you choose to print out your party invitations from the printer or you have decided to painstakingly scroll each one in the lost art of calligraphy, adding in a little table confetti just adds a nice bit of sparkle .

You can add the obvious party confetti to your invitations or you can get specialty table confetti to stick in the fold or crease of the invite. Champagne glass confetti or heart confetti can be appropriate for fun anniversary parties while you can add in fun stars or balloons to a birthday party invitation.

Remember that you just want to add a special light touch rather than stuff the envelope full. Setting your party invitation apart in this manner is quite easy and fun for those who are looking for that little something extra.

You may very well choose to make your own party invitations via a downloadable printout or you might set your children to work with some finger painting fun. Either way, adding in a dash of personal expression is a brilliant way to help your party shine before it even begins. While you can always rely on special order invitations in a pinch, there is undoubtedly something special about crafting your own.

The first ingredient for making your own party invitations, as I have seen them done, is a kid. At least one. Find more if you can. They do not grow the resulting mess linearly. You will have the same cleanup job with one kid as with three or four. With more of them, they will have more fun, and so will you.
 
Our kids are very artistic. We give them a theme, and they go to work with blank paper. We like to figure out how many party invitations we will need, and how much time we have to work. My wife sets a timer, and they go to work. This first invitation is usually just a dry run to figure out how much detail can be added in the time allotted. We don’t want to run a sweatshop so much as make sure we have an even amount of effort on each invitation. We don’t want to spend all of the time doing four, then find out that in the last half hour we have to get ten made.

With the time guidelines in place, the kids are free to do whatever they want to support the theme. My son likes to draw and colour in his pictures. My daughter likes to use glitter and to glue beads to her invitations. My wife and I address envelopes, as the kids penmanship is not quite good enough yet (not that mine is much better). So go ahead, turn your little artists loose on your party invitations - how bad can it be?

This point leads into the next reason. You want people to attend. This, in fact, is directly drawn upon what feeling people get from your invitation. If they think it is boring, another event or opportunity will win out for their attention before your party.

So how can an invitation made to be unique? The first way to create a unique invitation is to have a catchy attention grabber. Correlate it to your theme and then run with it. If it is a fun party, make the message fun, exciting and humorous. Use shapes and vibrant colours full of vibrancy and shine to attract attention. It is very common to see 3-D images. These images are created both flat on the page and also where they pop up off the page.

No matter what your theme is, you can make a unique invitation to go along with it. All it takes is a little creativity, time and thought. But if you think you have the creative talent of a loaf of bread, you can always use creative software to help you out. There are many invitation software packages you can buy for your PC, but if time is short try a company that specializes in party supplies and invites.

Before you can start to buy party supplies, you need to have a general list of how many people are attending. Thus, if you do not have the addresses of all your friends due to the fact that correspondence by written word is slowly dying, simply head online to myspace, orkut, facebook, or any other social networking site that you and your friends may use and look them up!

Even better, you can actually make an event page on most social networking websites now and create a digital RSVP list so you have an up to date list of how many people are coming so that you can buy the correct amount of party supplies. It really is as simple as that.

Next, now that you know how many people are coming, instead of rushing to different shops all over town, head online to find all the party supplies you could imagine and many more so you can plan an extravagant looking party in a short amount of time. Believe it or not, you may even have the time to develop your own theme since party websites like ours make it so easy to purchase everything you need in one click.

Internet party planning is quickly becoming the rage, as people are even planning their weddings and birthdays this way now. This is simply due to the ease of buying party supplies online, and because it is the quickest way to get a RSVP guest count, with barely any effort on your part!

There are many programs such as PowerPoint, Adobe Paint, and Photoshop which will let you play with graphics and figures to create your own invitations instead of paying money for shop invitations. In fact, some versions of Microsoft Word even have templates that you can use to formulate the basic outline for your invitations.

In fact, sometimes it is more fun to create your own party invitations because you can customise them to look the way you want with your own photos and graphics. Instead of having to search hard and pay more money to get an invitation that conveys the overall feeling you want your party to have, simply create it with your own words!

There is no end to the different formats you can use to create your own invitations. In fact, you can even create them in different shapes and styles if you wish. Plus, if you have children your guests may enjoy personalised invitations as it makes a lovely change to see a child’s piece of art instead of Hallmark’s words of wisdom on your card.

If you choose to print out your party invitations, it may be more cost effective to head to your local printing shop to recreate it rather than use up your own ink cartridge. However, this will be dependent on the amount of colour you include. If you allow your children to make cards with cardboard, then simply budget the project into a few days time span so their attention does not wane trying to complete the project all at once. After stuffing the envelopes the job’s done, and at a fraction of the usual cost.