Upping Your Percentages on Birthday Party RSVPs

I recently heard a heart-breaking story about a woman who invited 20+ kids to her son's 4th birthday party and got RSVPs from exactly 3 people. The other parents simply never bothered to respond. A recent transplant to Colorado, this woman asked another parent if this was typical and the other mom replied, "Oh, we don't do RSVPs in Colorado."

First of all, I must defend my home state. I have lived in Colorado for 13 years and have thrown over 20 birthday parties and this simply has not been my experience. I always RSVP and with few exceptions, so has everyone that I have ever invited to a party. The occasional lapse is inevitably accompanied by some plausible reason and has always been very forgivable.

But I do hear more and more about these no-RSVP situations. What is going on and how can the party-throwing parent up his/her chances of a response?

The truth? I have no idea what is going on. Good manners are good manners and there is really no excuse for this. Yes, people are busy. So what. The world does not revolve around you. Get over yourself and pick up that phone!

OK--I'm back and off my soapbox. And, I do have a few ideas on increasing your chances of getting RVSPs in a timely manner.

1. Give people notice about the party but not too much. If it's more than 2 weeks out, people tend to mentally file the RSVP in the "I'll handle this later" category and put it off and forget it. I like to shoot for getting the invitation to people about 10-14 days in advance of the party.
2. Set a clear date for RSVPs and, if possible, provide a compelling reason why you really must know. (Shameless plug time: for example, add something like "I will be ordering the beaded necklace kits from Bijoux in a Box --found at www.bijouxinabox.com --on Dec. 3rd and need to know if to order a kit for your daughter)
3. Give people multiple ways to respond to you. Include your phone number and your email on the invitation. Some people are phone people and some people are email people. Accomodate both and you improve your chances.
4. If you don't feel strongly about the properness of paper invitations and are inviting people who check email with some regularity, consider inviting people by email, either with your own digital invitation or through the use of a service such as evite.com. The advantage of a evite-like service is that they automatically follow-up with people who have not responded a few days before the party and also send reminders to those who have RSVPed "yes". It's free too.
5. If all else fails, swallow your pride and call people who haven't responded two days prior to the party. Yes, I know. You shouldn't have to do this. You really shouldn't. But do it anyway. You'll sleep better.