o.O
Goodness me... so now you're not only expected to feed a couple of kids, you HAVE to bring a present? I mean, I know most people assume gifts are a bit of a given, and they were probably addressing people's concerns about buying 3 presents instead of one, but the wording, however well-intentioned, does come across as quite rude!!

And there's no such thing as 'included' if you have to BYO!! Someone needs lessons in tact, and wording, methinks.

I dunno, maybe I was raised differently to some, but I'm with a lot of ladies here - these women, even if they aren't intending to, are coming across as extremely rude and inconsiderate. DD is only a toddler atm and so her parties are family affairs rather than big dos, but I remember going to bucketloads of parties as a kid and not one of them ever required anything more than showing up and going nuts with the lollies!! My parents would throw a birthday party for me that involved close friends and the family, then she'd send me to school on my birthday/the following Monday with a big Tupperware container full of cupcakes to share around, kwim?? That way they kept costs down and made sure there was no obligation on kids who I wasn't really close to, to give me presents, kwim?

It doesn't cost very much to, say, buy a couple of bags of chips and lollies, a few bottles of soft drink and order a stack of pizzas - especially if the party is during the day, most franchise joints have lunchtime discounts so feeding a bunch of 10-year-olds is quite cheap... I'd definitely do that over demanding that parents bring food to share around!! It's not hard to provide a decent party for the kids on your own, if three women together can't figure out how to do it then they need to Google some tips on throwing a kids' birthday party (and google some etiquette sites while they're at it!)...

So yeah, I'd be insulted. Mega-insulted after this latest invitation, to be honest. But, again, the kids shouldn't have to suffer because of the rudeness of somebody's parent/s so I guess I'd just suck it up, send DD with one gift and a bag of snakes lollies and call it done. :/