Graduation Party

When graduation comes along it is good to do something special. The graduate has likely worked very hard, persevered, worked through some disappointments and probably been a great child and friend. They may have given their time to charity, been a very positive person and even been a great sports person. There are son many ways each graduate will have been a unique and special person, not least the fact that you love them more than anything. So the chance to do something really special for your own graduate needs to be taken. These moments in time can be lost forever if you do not take your chance. It may be hard to work out exactly what to do, but it is all worthwhile.

For our family we first of all got going by setting a budget. The budget was a bit more than we could afford at the time. The budget then helped us determine what we should do. I did have some competing priorities in my mind at the time and I did feel the graduate should have the majority vote. Our own graduate is not a party person as such but he would socialise at a family gathering. We had many close and distant relatives who would send gifts so it would have been great to have them to a party. The graduate does have lots of friends and they play golf and hockey together. The graduate would rather spend the money on a golfing trip or a beach holiday. The school had a party arranged for which we had already bought tickets and a number of parents had already arranged house parties. Taking a view on these things made it quite hard to determine the best way forward. I was torn between a family party, an open house party and giving the graduate all the money for a golfing vacation to Scotland.

The family party had a lot of attraction as we could contain the socialising to close family and close friends. This would let the graduate thank them personally for their gifts and it would give us all a chance to be together as a family in celebration which we had not done for a while. Balanced against this was the fact I like to be part of the community and help out at school. So an Open House party had a lot of attraction. However due to the number of parties already arranged and the wishes of the graduate we decided to host a small family and close friends only gathering at our house. The graduate was already attending the school party. That left quite a lot of money in the budget. So we decided to travel to Scotland and let the graduate play golf.

I hope you find the right celebrations for your graduate.