EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GraduationParty.com, the leader in online advice for parents planning a graduation party with 600,000 visitors per year, conducted a survey of recent graduation party planners across the United States.
The survey results showed that parents put a lot of effort, time and money into graduation parties.
- $578 was the average amount spent on graduation parties.
- The average number of party guests was 67.
- More details on spending habits
“Facebook may be all the rage for teenagers communicating, but don’t rely on it to invite people to your graduation party,” says Ginger Venable, partner, GraduationParty.com. Parents reported lackluster results from social media invites, citing lots of confirmed guests ended up being no-shows. 88% of hosts used some type of internet-based media to invite their guests. One party planner explained her disappointment, “The people I gave paper invitations to attended the party. Of the people invited over Facebook, only about 20% showed up.” For more details on using social media to invite people to your graduation party visit our website.
Most party planners reported a great experience with their party, but those who were dissatisfied with their parties were disappointed by the weak turnout and the short stay of some of the guests. Venable says, “In addition to the unreliability of social media, another problematic finding is the fact that 65% of party planners held their party on the Saturday afternoon after the graduation ceremony, creating a competition of sorts.
“Not knowing how many guests to plan for is very frustrating. It creates a huge challenge for the host in figuring out how much food to purchase. The number one response for ‘what would I do differently?’ was ‘order less food!’” A food formula is available on GraduationParty.com to help party planners determine how much food to serve.
Two emerging trends/demographic changes the survey revealed are that more people are co-hosting parties with other graduates to save money in this soft economy (13%) and the number of people who face the issue of divorced spouses (25%).
GraduationParty.com has been researching graduation party trends and providing parents with free online advice since 1998. With 315 web pages of advice the site covers “Graduation Parties: Everything You Need to Know From Start to Finish”, which is also the name of their original book, published in 2007 by Lanewood. The Eden Prairie, MN based company has seen the number of people hosting graduation parties grow dramatically in the past ten years and estimates that 3,300,000 students will graduate in 2013. This represents a lot of party planning.
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