RSVP

RSVP – “Répondez s’il vous plaît” “Please Respond”, in English, is a graceful way of requesting people to respond to invitations to confirm acceptance or regrets to the event for which the guest has been invited.

I have used RSVP on many invitations and have experienced frustration with people not responding. I respond to RSVP requests without fail as I know how important it is to the host to know whether one is attending or not. Recently, I had to attend two lunches which kept getting postponed due to some reason or the other and finally both materialized after much toing and froing on the phone. The point however was that there was communication from both sides till the events took place and the hosts were not inconvenienced or out of pocket.

I also know of a recent case where expected number of people did not attend a function as the response for the RSVP request was minimal. The host rued the waste and almost wept when the final bill was presented.

And suddenly, as it keeps happening in my life over and over again another agonized soul has written about it and it is worth a read. I like his idea to change the system.

Have you had frustrating experiences with the RSVP? Do you think that we should change over to RVOM?