Mini-Epic Video Invitations Review – Personalised Birthday Party Invites

If you’ve ever experienced the logistical nightmare of ensuring a pile of party invitations for your child’s birthday, arrives with the correct recipient without getting lost, damaged, left on the teachers desk, left in book bags, eaten by the cat/dog/canary … you will welcome the Mini-Epic  personalised video invitations.

As a busy mum of four I have spent years organising my children’s birthday parties. Firstly you choose a pack of fairly uninspiring invitations from the local card shop, usually featuring pirates or fairies, only to find that they come in packs of 12. The usual class size is around 30, so you have to buy 3 packs of cards, with at least six left over! Great marketing strategy! I’ve drawers stuffed full of mismatched party invites that were “spare”. Then follows the tedious task of writing the invitations, making sure they have all the correct information and that you haven’t left anyone out. I usually encourage my child’s participation at this point, only to suggest they go and do something else after 5 minutes, due to the illegible handwriting after trying to cram information into the tiniest of space! Repeat this process thirty times.

You then have the ever so slightly awkward task of asking the extremely busy class teacher to distribute the invitations to the children. I’ve helped in a classroom and to put thirty envelopes into thirty book bags is no mean task! There are usually at least a couple of children not at school that day due to sickness etc. Their invite then ends up in a pile on the teachers desk, never to be seen again.

Anxiety then follows as you try to organise replies and chase up those that you haven’t heard from. Awkward situations occur in the playground, when you have to approach parents you don’t know and ask if their child is coming to the party.

Very awkward when they reply that “little Fennella” hasn’t received an invite and that she’s been having sleepless nights, thinking that she was the only one not invited!

With all of the above in mind I was thrilled to hear about Mini-Epic, which is an online platform where you can create and send personalised video invitations for kids’ parties. Mini-Epic was  launched by a father of twin girls and professional motion graphics designer, after his daughters asked him to create one for their birthday party.

You simply personalise one of the professionally animated templates with a photo and your party details, send to your guest list via email and track your RSVPs (within your account). You can also send reminders and updates about your party. If you wish you can download your video invitation to keep or share on Facebook.

How Mini-Epic works! The video below explains in a better way than I can how the process works.

For £9.99 you can create and send your personalised video invitation to up to 30 friends, and if you need to add more, you can upgrade your guest list by adding more friends for just 10p/extra guest. No more scrumpled “spare” invites  stuffed into drawers!

What I really like about Mini-Epic is the number of themes you can choose from. Gone are the days where you were restricted to the choice of fairies, pirates, football or Disney characters. The theme of the party invites have been designed to reflect the type of party you are hosting. Superhero, Bowling, Baking, Trampoline, Science, Football, Space, Magic, Videogames and general adaptable themes such as Rainbows, Robots and Funky can all be personalised with your child’s photo and party details.

Here are examples of themes you can personalise:-

The process of setting up your account and personalising the party invites is very simple. The only thing you need to have, is everyone on your guest lists email address. In this day and age when everything is digital and online, this information is easily collated.  Think of all the trees saved and drawer space freed up!

Your child will be really excited to see themselves in a mini video and it will be a great talking point with their friends in the run up to the party. The video’s are what my kids would describe as “pretty cool”, always a bonus with hard to please children!

Although my twins birthday’s are not until next year Mini-Epic personalised video invitations will be my first choice when organising their party. It’ll make a change to the usual run-of-the-mill paper ones! It will also make the whole RSVP process much easier.