How to Invite People for Cocktail Parties--Part II

Since no girl goes to any party by herself, then she will bring her friends. If you are getting a lot of calls from girls who want to know if they can come, even though they didn’t get an invitation, then you have succeeded. Remember to tell these girls that they can come. Also tell them that you will send them an invitation for the next cocktail party. Now you have made these girls feel like her friends, instead of feel less than their friends.

Therefore, if you send out over 120 invitations, then you can expect an excess of 300 girls at your party. Assume each girl will bring one to two friends each, and some girls won’t come. These invitations should be sent out no earlier than four days prior to and no later than two days prior to your party. If you send them out too early, girls will forget about the party. If you send it out too late, then they might have other plans for that night.

You should have the younger guys in your frat give the invitations to the girls. The ideal distribution would be to give them to girls in class in front of their friends. You can also go to their apartments and give it to them (if they’re home) or slide it under the door (if they’re not there). Here is an example of a basic cocktail party invitation. Remember to print it on nicer paper with a small design. Also the printed invitation should be easy to read.

Cocktail Party Invitation (in a fancy font, such as Lucida Handwriting. Or download more fonts from dafont.com.)

 

Dear «First_Name»,

You are cordially invited to attend a night of entertainment at: 

[Your frat]’s “[insert theme]” cocktail party

When: [Day, Date, Year]

Where: [Your frat’s address]

Time: [Put time, such as 10pm—2am]

 

Please come in semi-formal attire.

Sincerely,

[Your frat’s name] Social Committee

How to Invite People for Cocktail Parties--Part I

Since these types of parties are only once or twice a quarter (more often if you are in the semester system), then you should spend extra effort to make them more special and unique. These are “brothers-only” or “one guest per brother” parties so these events are more personal. With that being said, you should use invitations as your main source of advertising. Ask your brothers for names and addresses of girls that they would like to invite for the cocktail party. Compile the list and make personalized invitations for each girl on the list. 

Your job will be a lot easier if you utilize Microsoft Excel and Word to make the invitations. There is a “Mail Merge” function in Microsoft Word that will insert and consecutively print the first names of an Excel spreadsheet. If you take the time to do it once, you can do it over and over again for your parties. This saves you time of manually inputting the girls first names. Look for inexpensive themed printer paper at Staples or Michael’s.

Personalized invitations work extremely well for insuring the success of your event. When a girl receives her invitation, she will feel special and privileged that she got a personal invite to your fraternity’s party. She will be impressed that you even addressed the invitation personally to her by putting her first name after “Dear.” She’ll most likely think that you took the time to type a personal invitation just for her. She doesn’t know about the genius of “Mail Merge.” Check out About.com's tutorial on how to use Mail Merge

Not everyone will be getting an invitation, and this boosts the self-esteem of a girl. Often girls will hang up your frat’s cocktail party invitations in their rooms as a trophy to show their friends. If you are worried about offending girls, then don’t be. The whole point is to offend the girls because it makes the party seem more special and exclusive. I know that seems like a messed up idea, but it actually works. More in the next post.