I have a longstanding love of entertaining. I have stacks of 1950s books that I’ve collected about planning the perfect party, so in some ways I have a bit of a retro hostessing style; and in other ways, I’m right on the cutting edge of technology. I utilize my computer and smartphone for a lot of party-planning purposes, especially sending invitations. Although I love printing and making my own invites – I love sending and receiving snail mail – it often just isn’t practical, so I’ve sent everything from MySpace invites to personalized images attached to email.

So this hostess with the mostess was recently introduced to another method of virtual invitations – PercyVites. This company offers customizable video invitations featuring adorable characters from Arthur to Caillou. I thought it was a fun idea and wanted to test it out, so I made a video featuring Percy the robot to invite one of my friends over to dinner for her birthday. We’re both young-at-heart, so I thought she’d get a kick out of it. 😉 Creating a video is pretty straightforward – you enter in all of your personalized information, along with a photo, and you’re done. Do note that there is a difference between “Invitation Videos” and “Photo Compilation Videos” – the invitations are meant to be customized to each guest, since they have the guest’s name on them; you do have the option of adding another person to an “Invitation Video”, with a .69 cent charge applied per person. A photo compilation sends to a group of guests all at once, and can be sent to unlimited guests for $2.99. This page explains more about the different types of video and how it works. People can use the video page to RSVP and leave comments, which gives it some of the functionality of a MySpace or Facebook-style invitation.

The video I created was similar to the one above and was very cute. I showed off my handiwork to Jai and he told me he was actually pretty impressed at the effects – it is cool to see your customized information generated on the screen as Percy the robot watches. PercyVites is a good example of old fashioned entertaining getting a modern makeover!

Learn more about this service at PercyVites.com, and check them out on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+.