If you threw a party and invited everyone you knew

[Starla]

... how many people would be on your list?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. How do you determine what level a friendship/acquaintance is? How close do you feel you need to be to invite someone to a birthday party or similar celebration? Do you find it odd when someone you don't know very well invites you to a birthday/celebration/baby shower type event or are you flattered?

Two reasons I'm asking:
1) I got invited to a baby shower for the mother of one of Starlet's Brownie Troop sisters. This woman is Cookie Mom and she led the troop for one year. We never talk outside of Brownie meetings, I have never been to her house or gone out for coffee with her or even really had a personal conversation. So I was surprised when she told me I was invited to her shower and that, "The Brownie moms are pretty much my only friends, so I hope everyone can come." This actually endeared me to her because I don't have a lot of local friends either. Which brings me to...

2) My 30th birthday is coming up in December. One week before Christmas. It's the day kids in my town have their class parties and then are dismissed at noon to begin winter vacation. The week before that I will finally be graduating from my jr college.* I want to have a party. I want a BIG party with music and drinks and fun (my definition of big isn't really that big, maybe 15 people or more if they brought SO's). But I don't really have anyone to invite.

I would feel odd inviting the Brownie moms, even the ones I chat with a tiny bit outside of meetings. I have some strong acquaintances, but I don't feel like any of them would think to invite me to their parties (I know some haven't and this honestly doesn't bother me). If I had a nice, calm cake and decaf coffee party I can think of more people to invite, but even then it's this weird mishmash of people who don't know each other and it's not very many people. They also would pretty much all be unlikely to come because it's such a busy time of year and they would probably all assume I had much closer friends who would be there.

Sometimes I think my definition of friend is too strict. I have one person who I feel I can confide in and who I know I can count on who lives nearby and two more who live very far away. I consider them friends. Beyond that I have things like neighbors who I chat with and have even gone on family trips to Six Flags with but we've never done any stuff together just us two women. I have people I used to see a lot in this mom's group before I got too busy with school. And I have people from church, who are great, but they are almost all my parents' age so it's a different dynamic. Is it weird to invite those kind of people? Beyond the whole it being tacky to throw your own party thing.

I don't care about getting older, not being in my 20's anymore or anything like the usual "OMG, thirty!" stuff, but it really bugs me that I can't think of anyone to invite to a party. Or maybe I'm over-thinking things? Is my friendship situation actually pretty normal? I feel like everyone else has these friendships where they have girl's nights, the couples all get their families together to have BBQs on Memorial Day, stuff like that. Maybe less people are like that than I think. This is a small town and a lot of people have known each other since Kindergarten, but the town has doubled in size since I moved here ten years ago so obviously not everyone has been friends for decades.

What are your friendships like? How often do you talk? How often do you hang out? What makes you consider someone the kind of person you'd invite to your birthday party?




*I'm transferring to a university in January so I feel like getting my Associates is like Jr High graduation. Still, it's an accomplishment I guess and that combined with a big birthday seems like reason to party.

[bthyb]

I have a lot of "friends," as in people I like to hang out with and/or are part of my social group(s). When I have a party I invite people I would like to be there, regardless of closeness - the invitation itself can be a way of saying you'd like to be friends and strengthen a relationship. I also try not to be too concerned about whether people can make it - my birthday is Christmas and I've actually had parties on that day - I invite my friends and those who can be there show up.

Now are all these people close friends who I can talk to about everything - hell no. But they can be fun to have around.

Do you have people you'd like to talk to more? Invite 'em.

[AnglRdr]

I "know" a metric cubic crapton of people. I can count my friends on maybe 1.5 hands.

However, if I wanted to have a massive blowout, I'd invite everybody I know. If I wanted to have a dinner party, I'd just invite my friends.

I don't know that I would invite everybody I know to a baby shower. In my case, that'd be such an epic event, I'd invite the known universe. Perhaps even the unknown universe as well. But that's just me.

[Dactyl]

I now have Golden Girls stylee earworm.

If I had a party I wouldn't invite everyone I knew. Many years ago when all my friends had their 18th many hired large halls and literally invited everyone they knew. Half the people wouldn't turn up, the hall would be too large and people would break off into cliques.

I hired a much smaller room and invited everyone I wanted to be there. It was a fantastic night and most agreed it was one of the best parties.

[Beachlife!]

If I threw a party and invited everyone I knew, I would definitley not invite everyone I know. I know a whole lot of people, and most of them I don't mind being in the same room with. But very few of them I would call friends. I just don't use the term that loosely and I'd rather have fewer people I like than many warm bodies, even if the warm bodies consider me as a friend.

That said, I have a big Thanksgiving dinner the Saturday after the official Thanksgiving every year. An invitiation is the gold standard of my firiendship and we usually have 30-40 people each year. Even so, I'd probably consider less than half true friends.

[Ana Ng]

Three people. Counting my friends on snopes that I've met IRL? Four people? Five?

I'd count my sister but she's mad at me.

[Anyte]

There were about a dozen invitees to my baby shower. That didn't include my male friends and did include my MIL, whom I wouldn't normally invite to my birthday party. So it depends on the event.

[DawnStorm]

There are people I get together with once in a blue moon, but I think I have more imaginary friends than I do real life friends. Never done the 'girls night out thing' or gotten together with people for BBQs.
If I was to have a party, it'd be a very small one!

Dawn--my idea of a party is a DC Snopsters get together--Storm

[rhiandmoi]

Well I have 3 general circles of people that might qualify for an invite to a party like this.

1. My family and lifelong family friends. This is about 50 people.
2. El Marido's family and lifelong family friends. This is about 70 people.
3. Friends I've made as a grownup. This is about 10-20 people, depending on their plus one status at the time.

But, the three lists don't really overlap geographically, so it would probably be just my friends that I made as a grown up, even though I would send invites to the rest of them.

[Starla]

Originally Posted by Dactyl

I now have Golden Girls stylee earworm.

My diabolical plan worked.
Maybe this is why I don't have many friends.

If I had a party I wouldn't invite everyone I knew. Many years ago when all my friends had their 18th many hired large halls and literally invited everyone they knew. Half the people wouldn't turn up, the hall would be too large and people would break off into cliques.

I hired a much smaller room and invited everyone I wanted to be there. It was a fantastic night and most agreed it was one of the best parties.

This is what I am afraid of, but on a smaller scale. My house is pretty small and I don't really have room for more than 10 guests. Plus, I don't want to have to have everything perfect in my house for a party. I want to be able to relax and have fun. But if I rent anywhere or even reserve a room at a restaurant I'm going to be very disappointed if people don't come. If only 5 people came to my house it would be okay, but if only 5 came to the party house the city rents out it would feel very empty and sad.

I've been thinking about it more and I have two options that I would enjoy. One would be to try to rent the historic house in town and have an adults-only party with drinks and snacks and whatnot. It's not a huge space, but it probably would feel too big unless at least 10 people come. I'm not sure if it would be available for a Saturday that's two weeks before Christmas, but who knows? I could also reserve some tables at the local Tex Mex place, but eh.

The other would be to see if I could use my church for a daytime party. I could put a bouncy house in one corner of the church gym, have a giant sub sandwich and lots of soda and call it a party. For this I could invite all the Brownie moms and their kids, everyone at my church (because that's how you do if you use the church, we have a small congregation), all my friends from moms groups, and everything. More people could probably come because it's during the day and babysitters aren't needed. It's not what I envisioned originally, but it would be fun. Starling's birthday is the week before and her party won't be quite as cool but I guess she'll have to deal.

I would still feel weird inviting a whole bunch of people because of the whole present expectation thing, but it would be fun to have a huge blow-out and the family party is probably the best way to achieve that.
What's the general thought on mentioning presents with an invite? It would be kind of cool to ask for Toys for Tots but I do think it's generally tacky to mention gifts at all. But I really, really don't want all the people I just listed as possible guests to feel like they should get me a gift. I just want to have a fun day where I'm the princess.

[Starla]

This morning I was talking to my close friend (the one who lives nearby) about all of this and about my bouncy house idea. She said, "Whoa, whoa, WHOA! There is no way I can allow you to plan your own 30th birthday party. That's just not going to happen." So now I am to give her a list of everyone I know, with notes on who I am closer to, and she is going to talk with Mr S and plan something. It might be a girls weekend, it might be a blow-out party. She's a wedding photographer and could pull in about a million favors so it really could be anything. She said she had a bunch of ideas. So that's really cool. I hope they follow through because Mr S and my friend are both "good intensions" kind of people. But I'll keep my mouth shut and trust them.


I'm still really interested in other people's friendship dynamics. Do you have a lot of random friends or a group that all knows each other well? If you have a long-time SO do the two of you have couples friends or mostly separate friends? How often do you do things with the people you consider friends? Stuff like that.

[Auntie Witch]

It's hard for me to really answer this, because I don't go anywhere except to family dinners, and I don't really get invited - people catch on quickly that I don't really like to go to big deals, and particularly when there will be large numbers of people I don't know. In a way, it makes me a bit sad - the person who knows the most about me (not counting my husband) is someone I don't feel I know that well (and yet she says I know her better than anyone). Of course, she's a SPED teacher, and has teased me many times about how I'm probably an Aspie who was never diagnosed.

That said, if I had a big party, I'd end up with over 30 people if I just included my father's siblings and their children, with whom we are all close (we have dinner at Grandma's at least once a month, with 30 people there). When extended family gets together once a year for Easter dinner, I think there's about 75 people there, easily.

[Johnny Slick]

I'm not going to directly answer this because I am Johnny Slick but I do want to point out that you would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say "Thank you for being a friend."

[Insensible Crier]

Everyone I would want to invite could fit into a Ford Econoline. The number that would show up... let's just say I wouldn't need call ahead seating.

[Beckalina]

. . . The party would largely be family. But that's cool, I love drinking with my uncles and making fun of distant family members.