I’m not arguing the opposite.
No. What makes you think this? Absolutely NOT TRUE, and moreover, would in practice be a horrific imposition. So I’m invited to an event I either can’t or don’t want to attend, but simply because I got this invitation I’m obliged to pony up a gift? Please. This distorts everything that hospitality and celebration are supposed to be about.
Sending a gift when you won’t attend is indeed a lovely gesture. It is not something anyone should feel like they ought to do. Sending your regrets is all that’s needed.
Good manners exist to demonstrate respect. You may have low expectations of the people around you, but most people have enough respect for their peers to follow conventions of common courtesy.
But you’re right Lanzy. I have higher expectations of my own behavior than you do. I care if people think I’m disrespectful. If I am important enough for someone to feel I should witness their vows, then I don’t see an RSVP as that much of a painful chore that’s I’m putting an unrealistic demand on me.
So what happened, someone hold a gun to your head and forced you to invite people?
I am always croggled by people saying that they wanted one thing but had to go with something way more elaborate and expensive. Absolutely nothing is forcing one to have a fancy wedding … you can always elope and deal with people afterwards. It may disappoint Aunt Fannie and Granny Smith, but I doubt it will kill them.
There are plenty of people who want something small and intimate, but the person they’re marrying wants a big to-do. And I’ve personally known it to be the groom in several instances, so it’s hard to know what the politics of the decision are in any given case.
Yeah, you never know the politics of any family situation; it’s easy to say, “Just do what you want,” but only the couple involved know the repercussions of their decisions, and what’s worth going to war over.
Sort of, yeah.
Okay, so not a really a gun, but I learned a valuable lesson when I got married. While it was my day it wasn’t only my day. It was my wedding. It was my mother’s only daughter’s wedding. It was my husband’s mother’s only son’s wedding. It was the only chance my grandmother who was recently diagnosed with leukemia will probably ever have to see one of her grandchildren get married since I am the oldest grandchild by more than 6 years. My husband’s sister got married 5 years ago and the photographer somehow managed not to get a picture of his mother and sister together so this was the only opportunity his mother had to have a photo of herself with one of her children on their wedding day. A lot of stuff happened for my wedding not because it was important to me but because it was important to several other people who would be celebrating our wedding with us. Technically no one held a gun to my head but I couldn’t handle months and months of tears and sadness from people because this was the only chance they would have to insert important wedding thing here and we went with it because it didn’t hurt us at all to make those concessions for people and it gives our families memories they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.
Um, seriously? For 10 years I hosted a monthly dinner for people to get to gether and speak Russian. Almost every month there was some kind of PITA with people who didn’t reserve and showed up anyway, or reserved and didn’t show up. It drove me bonkers. My personal favorite was the time that 5 people reserved, and I dragged my ass on crutches to the restaurant to wait for them, and not a single one showed up. (Luckily, I had a hot Greek waiter, so it wasn’t so horrible to have a glass of wine by myself. But it was still damn inconsiderate of everyone not to let me know their plans had changed, especially when I provided an e-mail address and work and cell phone numbers for that express purpose.)
Do you seriously think it’s OK just never to let people who have invited you to something, whatever the event, know what’s going on? Remind me never to invite you to anything.
Same here. My mortification was compounded when I discovered that the reason he declined my offer to help pay for the wedding gift was because he hadn’t brought one. cringe
I stopped doing ethnic dinners for our local social group for the same reason - the crapshoot that booking a restaurant table was.
I’m going to have to assume you’re not reading my posts. I clearly and repeatedly have said to RSVP.
Then I’m afraid I’m not understanding your point that “overproduced” weddings that require RSVPs are a “bigger problem.”
If you believe people should RSVP, I’m really not following why the size or nature of the event has any bearing on how an invitee should respond. Can you explain a little more?
Yeah, I’m not getting how making something intimate and informal removes the obligation for invitees to RSVP. Even if I’m just calling a handful of friends to come over and grill hot dogs on a weekend afternoon, I need to know how many people are coming so I can make appropriate arrangements. I need to know how many dogs and buns to buy, and whether or not to break the extra lawn chairs out of storage, if nothing else. Having 12 people show up when you’ve bought for 4 is embarrassing; having 4 people show up when you’ve bought for 12 is infuriating.
The size of the event doesn’t have anything to do with how an invitee *should *respond. I’ve never said it does. RSVP good. Done talking about whether one should or shouldn’t RSVP.
That said, as much as people who don’t RSVP are annoying, there is a way to avoid the problem entirely. And that’s to hold events that don’t require RSVPing. Calling someone up on the phone for a dinner party doesn’t require an RSVP in this sense - it just requires an answer while you’re on the phone.
I’m willing to bet that no one here has helped put together a large wedding that had a 100% RSVP return rate. Because it’s basic human nature to procrastinate, to misplace the invite, and generally screw up even the simple act of checking a box and dropping the card in the mail. Bitching about it won’t fix the problem. Changing your expectations and behaviors to conform to reality will, though.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but giving someone an answer over the phone is, indeed, RSVP’ing to an invitation. You are responding to an invitation, which is exactly what RSVP means. Repondez, s’il vous plait–respond, please. In other words, let me know whether your ass is coming or not. Whether you send this information by enclosed reply card, personal note, phone call, Facebook post, or smoke signal, you have RSVPed.
Such as how?
I’m not asking that to get in your face, I’m genuinely curious what you think the best option is. What is an event that doesn’t require knowing in advance how many people to expect? Once you get past 4-5 guests, you need to know. Caterers want to know. Restaurants want to know. Hell, if I am doing all the cooking myself, I still need to know how much food to prepare, or drinks to buy.
And sometimes, keeping an event teeny tiny isn’t really feasible or desirable. My husband’s immediate family is fucking enormous (compared to mine). He has 6 siblings, all of whom are married with children. He has more than 50 first cousins.
Plus, there’s a ton of fun to be had in throwing a big bash. To successfully host a big bash – meaning, provide the space, the food, the drinks, the music, the decor – you simply need to know how many to expect. Usually the rule of thumb is to expect 2/3 of the invited number to show, but you really can’t count on that at all.
I know what RSVP means, but in this case what I am talking about is the practice of sending out written invitations with the exhortation to RSVP. Because they’re reading a piece of paper and not actually talking to a person, there’s far less impetus to do what they should do.
One’s immediate. You’ll get an answer. The other’s not. You might not.
If I call my friend on the phone and ask if she wants to go see a movie, and she says yes, she has simply ‘replied’. Because it’s a ‘conversation’. I don’t have to punctuate my sentence with ‘RSVP’.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time, I’m really trying to understand where you are coming from.
Let’s set the matter of weddings aside for a second. Let’s say I want to hold a Super Bowl party, and I decide to invite 50 people. I follow your advice and I don’t ask guests to RSVP. How am I to determine how much beer and brats I should buy to feed my guests? Or could you be suggesting that I ask my guests to bring whatever food and drink they wish to consume for themselves?
I’m just really not understanding your suggestion to hold events that “don’t require” RSVPing. Even without RSVPs, there needs to be some kind of planning for how to accommodate one’s guests.
If you want to throw a big bash, by all means, use the written invitation method, but don’t complain when 10% of the invitees don’t respond, because even though they should have, you can accurately predict they won’t.
Smaller, informal events are easier to coordinate by personally contacting the invitees, and easier to accommodate variations in the number of attendees, as long as you have a good estimate.