With Facebook notifications and Whatsapp messages blowing up your phone, who really needs Facebook event invites? The fact is that because people are so busy nowadays, they do need a reminder in order to make sure they don’t forget your special event. Here are our tips for creating a Facebook event, making sure things don’t get out of control!

A few years ago, a 16 year old girl from the small Dutch town of Haren accidentally sent out a Facebook invite for her birthday party to 30,000 people. She subsequently canceled her party but 4,000 people still showed up to find 600 riot police waiting for them. Suffice to say, things got pretty messy and some lessons were learned the hard way. Nevertheless, the girl was right about one thing: creating a Facebook invite for your next party is a MUST in many respects. It’s a fun and easy way to manage one of the most important aspects of your next party: the guests at your party. There are some drawbacks (riot police tend to be a buzz kill) but let’s first focus on all of the advantages to be had.

With a Facebook invite, you will know more or less how many people to expect at your party. It’s always hard to estimate this on your own so use an invite to your advantage and know firsthand how many people to expect at your party. This number won’t be exact but a close approximation. Many a time, event hosts prefer to first send out a Facebook invite to get a feel/idea for how many people to expect at their party and then according to that number, decide on a venue. This is surely more efficient than going the other way around.

Another plus is the ease of disseminating information and updates on your party. Use Facebook as your medium for announcing that you’re having a party and where and when it will be. If there will be a cover charge at the venue of your choice you’ll want to make your friends aware of this so there are no surprises the night of. Celebrating with an open bar? Let your friends know when it’s going to start, end, which drinks will be included, and how much it will cost so they can participate. Dress code is paramount to getting into many venues in NYC so you’ll definitely want to inform your guests on what to wear. If you want to open up a discussion on where to have your party and ask your guests where they prefer to go, then you can post a comment on your event wall and get a thread going! It’s the perfect way to engage your guests and get their feedback.

Customize your invite to be fun and cool. Posting pictures from previous birthday bashes will get everyone excited for the festivities this year. Guests can engage and participate by liking the pictures and leaving comments. Remind your friends how easy-going you are and get a good laugh with some slightly incriminating pictures of yourself. If you’re worried about things getting out of hand, this can be easily avoided all together by deactivating your event wall.

You’ll have your entire friends list in front of you so it will be tough to forget to invite anyone. Doing a joint party? Even better! Make the other party host an admin so she can invite her friends too. You may have some friends that do not have Facebook but with the prevalence of this social network, that number will be negligible. Don’t forget to send a reminder to all the guests the day before the party to make sure people remember your event.

There are some drawbacks to using a Facebook event invite when planning your party. If your invite is being promoted across Facebook, it will detract from the overall intimacy party. Your friends may also start inviting people you don’t know or want at your party. That last issue could be avoided by turning on a particular setting, but if you forget to do so, the damage will already be done.  So unless you want 4,000 rowdy uninvited Dutch guests to meet you outside of your party, don’t neglect those Facebook settings!