News and Society

Planning a party is a complicated process. It requires organizational skills, time, experience and a great deal of energy. Thankfully help is at hand with the arrival of online party planning tools, designed specifically to help your party go smoothly from start to finish.

Why plan a party online?

Planning your party on line is the perfect solution to your event planning needs. Gone are the days when guest lists were compiled by hand, invitations written and sent by snail mail and RSVPs tracked on a spread sheet. Now you can plan a party online using a service such as this one and let its revolutionary new software manage the whole process for you.

Online party planning enables you to create your guest list direct from your email contact list and customize your invitation from a huge range of traditional and contemporary designs to suit every occasion. The system will track your RSVPs in real time, giving you an at-a-glance picture of who is coming and who has yet to respond to your invite. A whole range of interactive task lists mean that you won't forget to make that important call to your DJ or transfer the deposit to your caterers too.

What type of party can I plan online?

Whether you are organizing a birthday, christening, wedding or other celebratory event, online party planning offers the perfect solution. Not only does it help with all the organizational factors, many sites also offer links to gift registries to help guests quickly and easily choose gifts that their recipients are guaranteed to love.

Social events, reunions and club nights are also perfect for planning online. There is no limit to the number of guests you can invite when you use an online party planning tool, it works just as well for a handful of close friends as it does for an event destined to be enjoyed by thousands.

Choose between a closed invitation list, or opening your event to an even wider audience by enabling your invitees to send your invitation on to their own friends and contacts.

How does it work?

If you are looking to plan a party online most sites will give easy-to-follow instructions to get you started. They will explain how to upload your contacts from your email address book and will lead you through on a step-by-step basis preparing your invitations.

Once they are ready for sending, a simple click of the mouse replaces a trip to the post office and all the associated costs traditional mail incurs. There is no need to manage your guest list as the software does it all for you, updating itself automatically with each and every response you receive.

Simple or complex task lists are available for you to customize to your own event needs, providing valuable information and guidelines to ensure that nothing gets missed.

Use a reputable provider to plan a party on line and discover for yourself just how easy it really is.

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Mr. Lopez, 71, said he planned to keep his seat in the State Assembly, despite calls from many city and state officials for his resignation. And new questions have been raised about how the State Assembly handled the sexual harassment claims, including a secret payment of more than $100,000 to settle one case involving Mr. Lopez.

On Tuesday, Gloria Allred, the prominent Los Angeles lawyer, who represented at least one woman in a claim against Mr. Lopez this year, said her office would never have discouraged a formal investigation by the State Legislature. Her comment rebutted claims by the Assembly that it keeps such cases secret only if employees insist on preserving their privacy.

“In any sex harassment case that our firm or our New York co-counsel and her firm, Mariann Wang of Cuti Hecker Wang, has ever been involved in,” Ms. Allred said, “we have never requested or insisted that a legislative committee or other body not proceed with an investigation.”

“To the contrary,” she said. “We believe that it is in the interest of good government and working women that there is full accountability and transparency about workplace sex harassment and that there should be full investigations of accusations of workplace harassment.”

A spokesman for the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, the Legislature’s most prominent Democrat, did not immediately return calls for comment.

On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has called on Mr. Lopez to resign, said the Assembly’s handling of the sexual harassment claims should be investigated by the state ethics commission, which overees ethics enforcement of both the executive and legislative branches.

The Assembly censured Mr. Lopez on Friday after an internal investigation by the Assembly’s bipartisan ethics committee substantiated allegations of harassment brought by two female employees in his office.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that the Assembly had authorized a secret payment to settle prior allegations against Mr. Lopez — allegations that were never referred to the ethics committee. Documents released by the Assembly on Monday showed that it paid $103,080 in June to settle the earlier case, which is said to have involved claims brought by two other women.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Assembly, Michael Whyland, said: “The only instance in which a complaint would not be handled by the ethics committee would be if a victim insisted for reasons of personal privacy that it not go before the committee. The Assembly would only keep such a matter confidential at the express insistence of the victim.”

Mr. Lopez continued on Tuesday to maintain his innocence.

“The onslaught of character attacks has put enormous emotional pressures on my family and close friends,” Mr. Lopez he said in a statement issued to explain his decision not to seek to continue as the leader of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. “I cannot sit by and allow that to continue.”

“My political history has been to fight through challenges and political conflicts,” he said, “but for the sake of loved ones and the Democratic Party, it is important that I take this action.”

The vote on the leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been scheduled for next month, and before the revelations contained in the censure, Mr. Lopez, who has been the chairman since 2005, would have easily won again.

Kevin Mintzer, a lawyer for the two women whose complaints led to Mr. Lopez’s censure, issued a blistering statement on Tuesday, saying that relinquishing a party leadership position was “wholly insufficient.”

“The notion that Mr. Lopez will be continue to be in a position to sexually harass other Assembly employees is intolerable,” he continued.

Mr. Lopez, in his statement, again denied that he had sexually harassed his staff members and characterized those claims as politically motivated. “I hope and intend to prove in the coming months the political nature of these accusations,” he wrote.

But Mr. Mintzer scoffed at Mr. Lopez’s denial, saying the censure was a product of a thorough investigation by the ethics committee, which is “comprised entirely of Mr. Lopez’ longtime colleagues in the Assembly and, as such, is the most favorable forum Mr. Lopez will ever have in this matter.”

Mr. Mintzer also said Mr. Lopez never offered any testimony or evidence during the investigation. “He apparently offered nothing but a lawyer’s denial,” he said.

As for Mr. Lopez’s statement regarding the emotional pressures he has faced as a result of the allegations, Mr. Mintzer said, “Mr. Lopez would do well to consider the considerable emotional distress he caused the victims.”

State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, said she was “delighted” to hear about Mr. Lopez’s decision, saying his continuation as chairman “would have been a black eye on the Brooklyn Democratic Party.”

But she joined other elected officials, including United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, in urging Mr. Lopez to relinquish his Assembly seat as well.

Some advocates for women’s rights also expanded their criticism to include Mr. Silver, who approved the secret payment to settle sexual harassment claims.

“This is a bombshell,” said Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women of New York City. “Sheldon Silver is now in the hot seat with Lopez and he has a lot of explaining to do.”

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