Subject: {FIRSTNAME}, How To Go About Sending Out Invitations... Hello {FIRSTNAME}, Let's go ahead & get started today with "Part 3 - How To Go About Sending Out Invitations" Part 3 - How To Go About Sending Out Invitations ================================================ A good rule of thumb here is to work with the mother (and ideally, the father) to-be in order to decide who should attend, and who should be left off the list. This is a delicate scenario and can cause a number of minor headaches (even some major ones). The problem is, simply, that while it would be ideal to invite everyone who would want to attend, that's just not practical; either economically, or simply in terms of planning. Ultimately, decisions will have to be made, and if you can work with the parents-to-be to make these decisions, the chances of making wise ones will increase. Once you've figured out who to invite - and this process can take a few days of thinking and re-thinking - the next step is to send out the invitations. Ensure that you do this well in advance of the baby shower. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, you want to give your invitees enough lead time to that if they do have something planned on the baby shower date that they can, if they wish, move those plans in order to attend. If you don't provide them with enough notice, even if they want to change their existing plans, they might not be able to. Secondly, you want to give people enough time to RSVP (i.e. confirm their attendance). Some people are not the most organized people in the world, and as such they might not RSVP right away. As such, you want to give them a bit of time to get to this on their ever-growing TO-DO list. Now, there's another issue here that we should discuss. Some people think, or just assume really, that if you don't RSVP, that means you aren't attending. That's actually not technically correct. RSVP doesn't mean (even in the French language from where it comes) that someone is going to attend. It simply means: please get back to me on this. Our next topic will be covering "How To Go About Sending Out Invitations"" For more information about how to go about sending out invitations, please refer to my baby shower guide at Take Care,