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RSVP

RSVP. We’ve all heard the term. In English, it means please respond. To me, and call me crazy, that means please, respond!

I realize that when your kids get invited to birthday parties it can sometimes feel overwhelming. If it is at a time of financial stress and you feel the pressure to buy a gift, or maybe you won’t have a ride that day, or you can’t find anyone to watch your younger ones, or you are just plain old unavailable that day, whatever the case may be, I get that it can be a bit much, especially when you’ve got multiple kids who are invited to multiple parties throughout the year. It’s a lot!

No one will hold it against you if you say no to an invite. What I will say that I find happens quite often is people are not responding at all. RSVP does not mean, only respond if you are coming. Not responding to an RSVP does not automatically mean no, it just means you are not considering what it means to the person doing the inviting.

Birthday invitations are not pamphlets given out to the general public. They are specific invitations given to friends chosen by the birthday child. So, when you decide on behalf of your child to dismiss the invite and not even give it a response, you are essentially ignoring the gesture.

It leaves a parent wondering did they even get the invite in the first place? Did they try and get a hold of you and they couldn’t? Did the invite get lost somewhere along the way? And while all of these things are completely valid, the lack of RSVP I have received over the years leads me to believe that it is less about human error than it is about people really believing, if you don’t RSVP it means no. It does not.

Of course life happens, we all make mistakes, oversights happen and sometimes we forget to respond. I am not talking about these types of situations. I’m talking to the serial non-RSVP-ers. Not RSVPing to mean no, is not a thing. Répondez S’il Vous Plaît, either way, it’s the decent thing to do.

Yours truly,

Hyper-organized mom who needs to know these things!