My gf’s family is huge. Yesterday she received an invitation for a high-school graduation party. She had to call her mother to get help figuring out who the grad is and how they are related. (That’s your Uncle Jimmy’s daughter from his second wedding. He adopted her but hasn’t kept in touch. You’ve never met her. Kinda deal)
The invitation stated “regrets only”. What’s up with this? We have to opt-out? Is this rude/common place/passive aggressive/what?
It’s commonplace. Just send a note with congratulations, but sorry you can’t attend. Otherwise they’ll order too much food and have an empty place setting.
I would assume, not that you HAVE to opt out, but that if you don’t, they’ll assume you’re coming.
Otherwise, that would be…different.
It sounds to me like a way to guarantee that you’ll have no clue how many people are coming to your party.
I’ve used this in the past and it’s never meant to be rude. It saves the people who are coming the effort of having to remember to RSVP. My experience is that getting people to RSVP is a pain. This way only some of them have to exert themselves.
What gets me is the “regrets only” invitations we get for High School graduation parties, baby showers, and weddings of obscure family members 5 or 6 states away. It seems sort of rude to me in that context.
Requesting a response is the commonplace part, and is needed for obvious practical reasons. However, I think the above response overlooked the key point of the OP–the note of “regrets only.”
I’ve never understood “regrets only” invitations. I think it’s not quite rude, but presumptuous; “Well, of *course *you’re going to come, it’s the event. Only the small number of people with irreconcilable conflicts would even *think *of missing it, so only they will have to respond.”
Judith Martin (Miss Manners) says
In another book she says,
…alas the last part of the quote wasn’t available online, but you can see where it was going.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s meant to be an RSVP option, not a commentary on how important my event is. Them again, I don’t invite out of state people to anything, so perhaps my offense at your offense is misplaced.
Look when you send out invites you have to decide - will more people accept or more people decline? If you think more people will accept than decline, then make the decliners have to do the work instead of the accepters.
It may seem weird to the 10% of people who don’t plan to come but for 90% of the guests, it was very easy (having to do nothing).
I don’t think the “regrets only” part seems sort of rude to me as much as the invitation itself does.
First, I’m not offended in the least. I said I didn’t consider the practice rude. But it presumes a default. At least one etiquette expert referred to the practice in general as “odd.”
On a practical note, how do you tell the difference between the people who are going to come and didn’t respond and the people who aren’t coming but didn’t respond?
Same way as when you ask for people to respond if they’re going to come. If you don’t hear from them, you contact them and ask what’s up.
Who invites the whole damn family to a graduation?
I woulda thought that sort of thing is an “immediate family only” kinda deal?
If I need help figuring out how we’re related, I really don’t care much that you’re graduating
Dude, graduation party, not graduation. Although if you’re making people RSVP to your grad party, you’re doing wrong. Grad parties are walking tacos, not salad forks.
I have never heard of this and I find it very presumptuous and a bit rude. Really, refusing to go is not necessarily something you are going to “regret” so what do you do if you don’t want to go but also don’t regret it, since the invitation said only to respond with regrets. Oops!
The word regrets, in terms of invitations, has nothing to do with whether you actually regret not going or not.
But, really, I think your family must be pretty bad if you don’t even have the slightest amount of regret that you won’t be able to come a family gathering.
Don’t you know, people need to feel offended by something so why not a party invitation in a format they’re not used to seeing? Seriously, I’m starting to think getting offended is some kind of sport for many people.
Miss Manners’ ridiculous quote about amusing assumptions makes me wonder if she needs to be hit with an Ice Age like the other old dinosaurs. Cheeky hosts? Jaysus Christmas that woman needs to get over herself. I can’t imagine walking around thinking that everyone is trying to send me a passive aggressive message with their choices. I think her assumptions smack of narcissism on her part that she really believes the hosts are thinking that much about her when choosing an invitation to send out. If I made the unfortunate mistake of sending an invitation to someone who thinks like that I’d hope they’d send their non-regetful regrets that they wouldn’t bring their black cloud to my party.
Does that mean you end up contacting everyone who is planning to come? Because those are the people who didn’t respond…
When I send out an invitation, and someone doesn’t respond, I don’t have any idea why and I would rather hear from everybody. When I got married we made phone calls two weeks before the wedding because I didn’t want to pay for someone who was too lazy to respond, forgot all about it, or in one case, never even got the invitation.
That’s what I was thinking…
If I’m going to go to an invite - I’ll respond to accept. If I’m not going, I don’t bother responding (I do alot of that). So… if a regret only invite came my way, I’d probably wonder if they really wanted me in the first place. 
Well, it’s more polite than this:
*We’re having a party!
Isn’t that pleasant?
Whether you attend or not
We’d like a present.
*