Christmas is a time to celebrate, but it can also get a little competitive. “With so few weekends between now and Christmas, you can have three or four parties a night to choose from,” says Gentry O’Neill, owner of Paper on the Avenue, on Libbie near Grove. Give yourself the competitive edge and set your event apart with the invite — and a little advice from Gentry:
- Invitations are the first impressions for your event; they set the tone. Let the design of the invite dictate how formal or casual the party is. It’s much more gracious to set the tone in the invitation’s text and the way it is addressed than to note “formal attire” on the bottom, which can be so abrupt.
- Be creative with your R.S.V.P. language. A play on words or a rhyme is good. Try “Ho, ho, ho — let us know” or “Give us a jingle!”
- Don’t get so swept away that you forget the basics: date, time and place.
This year, invitations are moving away from red and green. Experiment with lime, raspberry, brown and aqua for something contemporary. Argyle and madras patterns are back, and polka dots are really huge now, O’Neill says. HS