Why does no-one RSVP to invites anymore?

Why does no-one RSVP to invites anymore?

It seems that replying to invitations has gone out of fashion. One party-host offers tips on how to get a response

By Ben West in The Telegraph

In December, my partner Sonja and I held a Christmas party at our London home. After weeks of planning, what struck us as the most challenging aspect of the whole event was not how much to spend on wine, what music to play or whom to invite from the minefield of people who were not on speaking terms, but how difficult it was to simply get people to let us know whether they wanted to come or not. I wasn’t in possession of an accurate guest list until the party’s end.

We sent out 65 invitations via email, mobile text, Facebook message and the post. Two weeks before the event only 18 people had replied. One of these had, infuriatingly, asked who else would be at the party before confirming his decision. It made me feel I was expected to sell the party to him, if I were to be graced with his presence.

Others among the 18 responded with a “maybe”, an equally maddening reply. I accept that some people genuinely may not know their plans until very late in the day – their work may entail short-notice travel or they could have responsibilities such as caring for a relative or child – but when someone says they “hope” to be there you can’t help concluding that they are hanging on in case something better comes along.

The feeble response surprised Sonja, who is Swiss: “We Swiss have the picture that Brits are so polite, but it’s not true.”

Why people think it is OK to completely ignore a party RSVP these days is beyond me. I’d invited everyone on my list because I cared about their presence there. As hosts, we were prepared to spend a great deal of time, effort, energy and money making sure we people would enjoy themselves. All my guests had to do in return was rattle off a quick “I’d love to come” or a “thanks, but no thanks”.

Being British, that was all we required – unlike in Los Angeles, where you can imagine why a typical RSVP, which comes complete with enough questions about dietary requirements as the average GCSE, might put people off.

It puzzles me why so many people do not realise that no answer is not an answer. It could mean you have not received the invitation, or have forgotten about it. It could also mean you’re lying dead on your kitchen floor and no one knows because your rudeness has cost you most of your friends.

I considered chasing up the non-responders with telephone calls, but that felt like begging. If I had to plead for an answer to the invitation, I felt, perhaps I had made a mistake in asking the person in the first place. I wondered whether their silence was simply a polite way of saying, “I’d rather bang nails in my head than fall victim to your sorry idea of a party.”

I then wondered whether some people didn’t actually understand what RSVP means. Some people consider “RSVP” to be a bit pretentious, yet it is really nothing more than a shorthand way of saying “Please indicate whether you can attend so I can plan the amount of food and drink we will need”. Perhaps we should have opted instead for the clear and simple “Please let us know if you’re coming by the 5th of next month, we’re not bloody telepathic”, in big letters instead.

Reflecting on the RSVP silence, I began to consider the etiquette of modern invitations.

“One of the most time-consuming elements running up to a wedding is chasing up replies,” I was told by Sarah Haywood, a wedding planner. “It is very tiresome. Ten years ago it would have been rare to chase RSVPs, now it is commonplace. People simply aren’t so polite now. I wrote to thank someone for a dinner the other day and the host said I was the only person who bothered to.”

Perhaps, I wondered, it is the less tangible nature of digital invitations that is to blame. The online invitation creation website evite.com claims to facilitate the sending of more than 25,000

invitations every hour. If the response to my party is anything to go by, there must be an awful lot of irate hosts out there.

The proliferation of social media means that people receive more invitations than ever nowadays. Email invites can get lost in the sea of Viagra-related spam. Facebook event invitations have to compete with requests to start a virtual farm or other such drivel. You can send out an invitation to all your Facebook friends in seconds and the ease of this means that invitations do not receive anything like the gravitas a printed invitation by post once had.

Perhaps a formal, old-fashioned “stiffy” is the only way to elicit a response?

“A cool-looking invitation gets people excited, and then they are more likely to reply,” says Johnny Roxburgh, director of The Admirable Crichton, party designers for the likes of Prince Charles and Nigella Lawson.

As the date of our party grew nearer, some more replies trickled in. I eventually bought what I assumed would be rather more food and drink than would be necessary, reasoning that it would be better to be lumbered with too much afterwards than run out of vol-au-vents or drinks half way through.

On the day of the party I still hadn’t heard from many of my invitees, and by this time I had lost interest in exactly who would turn up. Just as well, as some people who hadn’t RSVP’d appeared on the doorstep, and others who had said they would attend did not.

One guy who had confirmed his attendance had insisted on a gluten-free option, so we obliged. He didn’t show up.

Jonny Roxburgh thinks I should have put my foot down, and not allowed guests who hadn’t RSVP’d into my home. “Generally, if you haven’t replied, you really shouldn’t go,” he says.

Many people think themselves overworked and busy, and I can see why sending a reply to an RSVP is low on the list of priorities. But it is ironic that our general addiction to social networking has contributed to people failing to give importance to relationships in the real world – and that includes displaying enough politeness to send a quick reply to an invitation to a real world party.

I hope this serves as a warning to all the non-RSVPers: unless you reply promptly to my next party invitation, consider yourself banned from future guest lists. You will then have all the time in the world to interact virtually, but you’ll have little chance in the real world.

So, how many people in total turned up to our party? Fortunately, more than 50. Most of them, it seems did want to live in the real world.

Send a “save the date” message prior to sending the invitation.

Clearly word your invitation with a cut-off date for RSVPs.

Make any cut-off date fairly artificial to allow for people to reply (as many probably will) after the date.

Consider wording it “please reply” instead of “RSVP” so there’s no ambiguity.

Better still, include a reason why you need a response. For example: “Please reply by May 26 so I know how much wine to buy.”

Consider omitting the time of the party on the invitation so that anyone attending will have to telephone or text to ask the time.

Include as many reply options as possible: landline, mobile, email, address …

Add a reply card with postal invitations or a ready-worded reply email option with emailed ones.

Bear in mind there may be extenuating circumstances preventing someone from RSVPing promptly so give the benefit of the doubt and reserve your disdain for those with a clear “can’t be bothered” history.