Getting Back RSVPs

Planning a birthday party for your child, inviting their class and then waiting for RSVPs can be more stressful than awaiting test results. It’s like a personal round of American Idol. Will the children like your child enough to bug their parents to respond to the invite? How will it affect your child’s self-esteem if only a few come back or worse, none? I think the main thing is to make sure school is not the center of your child's social life. Church, the neighborhood, activities and of course your own family and children of friends will help make them well rounded in the social arena. But beyond that, I think this is a question for the psychologists out there. (Feel free to chime in!) My focus today is getting back those darned RSVPs!

Personally, I hate the whole process. I do it, however, for my kids. Do we invite the whole class knowing darned well we don’t want them all there? Can’t we just invite his or her friends? But if you do that, you can't send the invites in to school with them, lest someone see it and get their feelings hurt, like this Swedish parent some time back:

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.

The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.

"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.

"No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way, it's like taking someone's post," he added.

A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.

BBC News

Crazy.

My younger daughter, on the other hand, is still culling her little group. Problem is she is friends with EVERYONE. She’s a pied piper making friends everywhere she goes. Inviting the class isn’t far-fetched in her case, but I’m not down with paying for them all.

Still, we sent the invites and hoped we wouldn’t get them all back. We got a couple of calls instead and I prepared her the whole time for the possibility of no one showing because she has the misfortune (hate calling it that) of being born around Halloween. “We’ll have fun no matter what!” One school friend came. She still had fun.

Back to the RSVPs. I still don’t know how to get them back, at least most of them, every time. Why don’t people return them? My guess is we are living in an age of info overload and people are basically procrastinating coach potatoes. “Later” is the mantra of our society, really, so when you give them a date, they take all that time and sometimes more.

So to improve your chances, you need all possible ways to contact people – phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses if you can get them. One parent in my daughter’s class sent the invite once then a follow-up one the week of the event, which was smart because I hold on to the invites but don’t always remember to call. I’m sorry. It’s not intentional. It’s just that’s sometimes it’s hard to know if the scheduling will work or even if we’ll have money for someone else’s birthday gift that week if other stuff is going on.

So let’s start with the basics. For those who don’t know and don’t want to admit they don’t know, RSVP means Respondez S'il Vous Plait. Translation – respond please! A brief history, according to How Stuff Works:

An Italian diplomat, Conte Baldassare Castiglione, wrote the first book about proper behavior among nobility in the 16th century. Many of the practices of Western etiquette, however, came from the French court of King Louis XIV in the late 17th and early 18th c­enturies. At Versailles, his palace, Louis XIV had the rules for court behavior written on what the French referred to as "tic­kets," or "étiquette." The tickets either were signs posted at Versailles or were the invitations issued to court events with the rules of behavior printed on the back; experts give different versions of the origin. And French was the language of refinement and high society through the 19th century in the United States. Judith Martin, the author of etiquette books and a syndicated newspaper columnist known as "Miss Manners," thinks that "R.S.V.P." came about as a polite way of reminding people of something that they should already know: If you receive an invitation, you should reply.

How do you get those replies? I found a few ways you can try:

If you ask guests to RSVP by a specific date, most parents will call! For the rest, you will need to get on the phone to find out who is coming. Just because a parent hasn’t responded, don’t assume their child isn’t coming to your party! And you really do need a head count for planning purposes, because you want to have enough food and party favors for every child who attends the party.

When making the call, you can say something like “Hello, this is Maggie Jones. Will your son Kevin be able to join us for the birthday party this weekend?” To keep track of responses as you speak to the parents, print a copy of our guest list sheet and keep it near the phone.

You should also be prepared to answer a common question from other parents, which is "what gift would your child like?" Responding with "it doesn't matter" won't help the other parent, so be ready with a few ideas. You can say something like "Thank you for asking. Jack really loves Legos, dinosaurs, and books about cars."

Birthday in a Box

Here’s a nifty tip from Diane Pollitt, Party Guide at PartyMerchant.com via About.com:

Mail your invitations on a Wednesday! Why Wednesday you ask? If an invitation is mailed on Wednesday it is more likely to arrive at its destination on Friday or Saturday, this is the objective. Receiving the invitation on the weekend, instead of a weekday, will give your guest time to read and return your RSVP more promptly….Your party-goers will have just a little more time to deal with their social calendar, coordinate dates, travel, babysitters and other incidental details. It becomes a coordinated effort on your part that your guests will appreciate.

So what do you think? Why don’t people RSVP and what can a party-planning parent do about it?

REMEMBER: Mother's Day is coming and our early bird special is ending this Saturday. And if you haven't entered our Jigsaw Puzzle Memory Contest, why the heck not?! It's a free puzzle people. Who doesn't like free? Read all about it just one post down. :-D