The Chronic Consumer

I have a couple of friends who are going to have their first babies within the next few months, and they’re kind of debating how they should handle the birth announcements. They’re not planning to issue the announcements together, of course; they were just kind of bouncing ideas off each other.

Anyway, the biggest sticking point seemed to be whether the new parents should buy the announcements from a store or simply print them out on the computer. One friend said for something as important as the announcement of a first child, you should go all out and buy the nicest cards you can afford. The other said nobody except close relatives will even care anyway, so a computer printout would be fine.

I was almost asked for my opinion — until they remembered that I didn’t send out any announcements at all when my son was born! Oh, well.

So what do you say, folks? Is it too tacky to print out birth announcements? Should you go with nice store-bought cards instead?