Répondez S'il Vous Plaît, or: Why the Hell Don't You Tell Me Whether You're Coming or Not?!

More and more often, I have found in my personal experience, that guests do not reply to me whether or not they plan to attend my parties, even when the RSVP is clearly printed on the invitation. Has rudeness really become such a growing trend in our society? Or, perhaps, the decline in RSVP's can be attributed to ignorance and not rudeness.

The term RSVP comes from the French expression "répondez s'il vous plaît", meaning "please respond". If RSVP is written on an invitation it means the invited guest must tell the host whether or not they plan to attend the party. Yes, really.

Is this really that difficult? Especially in our world today, filled with telephones, fax machines, email, texts, IM, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace... the choice of communication tools is endless. Just tell me! Any which way you can. I feel like I'm in the Dr. Seuss book Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now: "The time has come. The time is now. Just RSVP! I don't care how!"

You get the invitation, you tell me whether or not you're coming as soon as possible! It's that simple. It does not mean to respond only if you're coming, and it does not mean respond only if you're not coming (the expression "regrets only" is reserved for that instance). It means that I need a definite head count for the planned event, and I need it by the date specified on the invitation.

An incomplete list of respondents can cause numerous problems for me, including difficulty in planning food, uncertainty over the number of party favors, and difficulties in planning appropriate seating, among other things. When an invited guest doesn't RSVP, it's just plain rude.

The worst yet, I had a lot of guests who never RSVP'd invited to my wedding. $200 a plate, and they couldn't tell me if they were going to eat it or not. You know that old saying, "What are you waiting for... an engraved invitation?" I guess even that engraved invitation wasn't enough.

So now that I'm throwing the kids birthday parties and Halloween parties and end-of-the-year parties, and the lack of RSVPs has actually gotten worse. I have now had to send out Reminder Notices: a follow-up email to people that have not yet RSVP'd, asking them, "Uh, haven't heard from you yet! Are you coming, or what?" (I'm not using those words, exactly, but that's what it feels like.) This means I am actually inviting them twice, even when they didn't have the courtesy to respond once. "Please, please come to my party! Won't you come to my party? PLEEEEEASE??"

Really, if you can't come, I understand. But just TELL ME! PLEASE!