Repondez s'il vous Plait

There's a major event for one of our projects on Thursday. We've been planning it for months. The save the date went out the first week of the new year. The actual invites were hand delivered the second week of January. Two reminder e-mails went out the following two weeks. Phone messages were left for invitees we had not heard from last week.

Everything stated the date of the event. Almost as important, everything that was sent out requested a response no later then Friday, January 25.

Out of the 500 invitations that were sent out, we received a response, whether acceptance or regret, from 175 individuals. At least 60 of those we received only because we spoke with them personally when we were making the phone calls last week.

Monday morning we had to submit final numbers to the caterer and begin printing the name tags and programs.

Between late Monday morning til this evening we have now received 100 - late - responses.

So now the last minute frantic call to the caterer gets made.

Yes, I do realize that for events the caterer generally makes 10% more then what was ordered, and we also padded our numbers a bit. But not enough for 100 additional attendees. And we still have another day to receive late responses - not to mention the occasional random walk-in attendee.

This is not the first event like this we have thrown and most of the professionals in my industry are worse then the average individual at responding to invites. But there is no easy way to know just how many more attendees you will have then actual responses received. One of the major negatives to throwing a party, balancing ordering enough food and drinks for the numbers of guests set to attend, but not wasting money on an over abundance of more then what will really be consumed.

It used to be expected behavior that when you receive an invitation you respond - as soon as possible, but definitely no later then the requested date.

Today, however, more often then not, you have to hound some of your invitees in order to get a definite answer and plan appropriately. You would think with all the gadgets and software we have today to make things easier and faster that you would get more accurate responses to invitations.

With sites like Evite, it takes only a second to click yes, no or maybe to an invitation. Yet it seems like the easier it is to send out and read the invitation, the less likely someone will respond.

I admit, even as I rant about this, I have also committed the party invite faux pas of not responding to an online invitation.

If I responded yes, but then was unable to show up, I knew I would get crap for days after the party for not showing when I said I would.

If I responded no, unless there was some really good reason, I could expect to get pressure from that day until the party, to show up.

I have friends who don't respond to electronic invites for the same reason. Some who don't respond because they don't want every other person on the list seeing what their response was. Some who just don't ever get the invite because of spam filters.

It seems crazy for something that is supposed to be a good time for all can start out with such dilemmas.

So from this day forward, I say we all make a pact.

For the invitee,

We the invitees will respond as many days as possible prior to the requested date.

For the inviter,

We the hosts promise to accept your acceptance or regret with courtesy and understanding. Which includes not pressuring as to why you can't make said event.

Problem solved!