Graduation celebration expectations.

[Anonymous]

What are thoughts on celebrating High School graduation?

Is it customary to have a huge party with a restaurant/ hall booking with friends and family.. spending good amount of money.

Or is it more like a family/ extended family event.

Or just the kids hanging out together at a restaurant, that sort of activity?

My ds doesn’t really want a ceremonial event. And I do want to respect that and do what he really wants to do.
But I feel like there are expectations that the family would want a get together, and ds he has agreed to that. Then on another day just hang out with his friends later.

My dh is now saying then why do a family event either, and just to have him hang out with his friends at a restaurant.

Highly confused. What would you do?

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Just to clarify , the first option above is family and family friends.

[Anonymous]

We’re not in the type of neighborhood where people have large parties at a venue. Typically the celebrations are backyard Picnics with family and friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are thoughts on celebrating High School graduation?

Is it customary to have a huge party with a restaurant/ hall booking with friends and family.. spending good amount of money.

Or is it more like a family/ extended family event.

Or just the kids hanging out together at a restaurant, that sort of activity?

My ds doesn’t really want a ceremonial event. And I do want to respect that and do what he really wants to do.
But I feel like there are expectations that the family would want a get together, and ds he has agreed to that. Then on another day just hang out with his friends later.

My dh is now saying then why do a family event either, and just to have him hang out with his friends at a restaurant.

Highly confused. What would you do?

Another recent thread
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1306682.page#31348838

[Anonymous]

We had backyard bbq and indoor house party. Family, friends, neighbors, etc. were invited. Not formal.

[Anonymous]

We went out to dinner afterwards with family- there were 6 or 7 in total. Some friends had parties in the month and my kids attended those.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had backyard bbq and indoor house party. Family, friends, neighbors, etc. were invited. Not formal.

OP here

I wish we had a big backyard. Ours is quite small.

[Anonymous]

In the same boat here, deciding between restaurant or home.

[Anonymous]

We just had a nice dinner, all four of us, parents and kids. Two of my neighbors teamed up to have a very casual BBQ party for their two sons at their high school graduation, to which we were invited. But more than that is weird? High school graduation is simply not important.

[Anonymous]

We just went to a nice restaurant following the actual ceremony. We also did cake, etc. at home with the grandparents.

Some kids have backyard parties largely for friends. My kids attended a number of such parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We just had a nice dinner, all four of us, parents and kids. Two of my neighbors teamed up to have a very casual BBQ party for their two sons at their high school graduation, to which we were invited. But more than that is weird? High school graduation is simply not important.

Me again. And we live in a Bethesda neighborhood that has 1.5-5M homes. This has nothing to do with what we can afford, but more to do with being reasonable. Our kids are expected to graduate from college, go to grad school, get married, etc. Not every event in their lives needs to come with a huge formal celebration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re not in the type of neighborhood where people have large parties at a venue. Typically the celebrations are backyard Picnics with family and friends.

Same.

[Anonymous]

We did not have "a party" for our DC (an only child). It was complicated. My FIL had died unexpectedly a couple of months before. We were still coming out of Covid. DC pretty much hated HS. We do not live near family and didn't even think we had "people" to invite. I mean, it felt weird to invite other families from the neighborhood who also had kids graduating.

But, I think, mainly the stress of losing my beloved FIL so unexpectedly. There was not much happy in our lives.

We did go to a small family dinner in Bethesda and it was really nice.

All that being said -- I do want a party for college graduation this year, though.

[Anonymous]

OP, all of his friends, most are in the same grade and graduating too, right? What we see around us are Open Houses. More high schoolers than adults, but plenty of adults, and siblings. Sort of a way for families to say goodbye to each other/or say, "we really should get together. Let's make sure we stay in touch." and some mean it.

The silly thing is: every Grad party invites a gift. Often the preferred gift is a gift card rather than just handing them cash. You give my kid a gift card, and the next weekend at your party I'll give your kid a gift card.

For relatives who come, they usually enjoy seeing the high schooler's peers, who their friends are. How teenagers interact. Most family are satisfied to just be included.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, those grad parties are stretched-out over several weeks around graduation.

What we did as a family or what our HS Senior did immediately after the Graduation Ceremony, I don't remember unless .. is that the night FCPS has all-night parties at local rec centers?