Mom speaks out after accidentally inviting 487 guests to daughter's birthday party
Emily King said her mistake was "too funny not to share."
A California mom is speaking out after accidentally inviting all 487 of her phone contacts to her daughter's upcoming first birthday party.
Emily King, who shared the hilarious incident in a now-viral TikTok video, told "Good Morning America" she still vividly remembers that sinking feeling she had when she realized she had made a giant mistake.
"I kind of like, immediately knew. I was like, 'Wait, something's wrong. … This is not happening.' So like, all the blood rushes from my body," King recalled of the moment on April 10 when she noticed the online invitation service she was using sent a digital invitation to her entire list after she had imported her phone contacts to the platform.
King said that when she was setting up her daughter Ivy's June birthday party invitation, she noticed Evite, the service she was using on her smartphone, offered an option to import the contact information of potential guests.
"I see this tab and it says 'import guests from previous parties.' And I just had a St. Patrick's Day party so I was like, 'Oh, perfect,'" King explained of her thought process.
After importing her contacts, King thought she would be able to select which one of them would receive an invitation. But, that wasn't the case.
"It took me to the actual invitation page, and it said 'Ivy's first birthday' -- and then at the bottom, it said, 'Guests: 487' … and I was mortified," King said.
"I started to look at the list and it's everyone that I had ever put in my phone," King said. "And not only that, it's everyone I put in my phone as they are stored in my phone … and everyone that I ever emailed through my job."
King, a teacher, said she was confused at first, and then unnerved that acquaintances she had met once, including her co-workers and students, were included in the guest list in addition to close family and friends she had intended to invite. The kicker, too, was that everyone received a text message invitation based on what they were labeled in her phone contacts list.
"It's like, 'cute boy from the bar' and … like 'old man neighbor' and it's like, 'Derek eyeroll emoji' and I hit this girl's car in a grocery store parking lot once [and] it said 'Jess hit car in parking lot,'" King said. "Like, all of these people and they said they're on the invite list and that's how they received the invite in their phone."
King estimated that within five minutes of realizing what she had done, she quickly deleted the party event. The invitation text messages, however, had already been sent out, and King and her friends were able to laugh about it afterward.
"At first I was mortified, but I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humor," King said. "So I was like, I was embarrassed but then also cracking up, like I couldn't stop laughing that this had happened."
King said she hopes others can learn from her mistake, which she said was simply "too funny not to share."
"Always double check before you select anything that looks like it could be a 'Select All' button," she said.
In a statement to "GMA," Evite said the company reached out to King when they noticed her viral TikTok post.
"We immediately reached out to Em as soon as we saw her post! While we have several steps in place so that things like this don't occur for guests, Em's journey inspired something we call the 'Emily Hotfix' that removes the 'select all' function on iOS apps. We're always learning from our users, and hope this update is a help for other users too!" the company said.
As for Ivy's first birthday party, King said it's back on and will be a "Lord of the Rings"-themed bash. Plus, she decided to expand her guest list from 50 to 70 invitees.
"It's going to be definitely a first birthday for the books. I'm really excited when [Ivy's] older to be able to tell her the story," King said.
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