PART ONE: I (23F) just graduated and wanted to celebrate properly. Where I’m from it’s a big deal, so I planned two things: a casual pub night on the actual day, and then a costume party the following weekend (the real celebration and something I’ve always wanted to do).For the party, I organized it at my house in the mountains, about 2 hours away from the city where most of my friends live, except for 3 that are from my hometown. I made a group chat, proposed two different weekends, and had everyone vote so I could pick the one that worked best. Around 13 people chose the 25/26 weekend. I also made it easy: people could sleep over, and I had space and sleeping bags. From the start, a few people said they couldn’t come because they had to study, which annoyed me a bit since they had no issue coming to the pub night but not the actual celebration. Still, I went ahead with the plan.
Then during the week before the party, people started canceling:
- My long-distance boyfriend couldn’t come (understandable, he was graduating too)
- My best friend told me she could only attend the ceremony and not come to the party (and she even came late on the ceremony date, so we just had a few hours together)
- A friend who had voted for that weekend said it was her parents’ anniversary
- Another who voted said he had a concert
- Another said she might only come briefly the next morning due to a serious personal reason, which I totally understood btw and really appreciated the effort
On top of that, the people who were still coming were planning to stay for very short times (arriving late, leaving early in the morning again cause of studying, or even leaving the same night due to plans the next morning), which kind of defeated the idea of a full weekend together, especially since they chose the days. By the day before, the whole thing already felt like it was falling apart compared to what I had planned. The night before the party, I met up with one of the friends who was supposed to come, and I asked her if I should just cancel or postpone because so many people had already dropped out and the whole thing didn’t feel like what I had planned anymore. She told me not to make it a big deal and to just enjoy the people who were still coming, so I decided to go ahead with it.
PART TWO IN THE COMMENTS