With Evites and Facebook invites becoming the main form of invitations, our sense of the importance of RSVP’ing has seemingly diminished. What happened to a formal invitation and a polite response that follows not too long after?
The cyber world has taken over and very few formal invitations seem to exist.
When a Facebook event is posted and sent, there are four options: attending, maybe attending, not attending or simply ignoring the invite altogether.
Formal printed invitations are shifting towards online invitations, and fewer people are having invitations printed for their events. Stores like Papyrus that sell custom, printed invitations, have noticed a small decline in business.
When asked about what kind of events the majority of invitations are used for, Papyrus manager Shanna Hamilton said, “We do all kinds, but wedding is the highest volume here.”
Most customers of Papyrus include those 20 years old and older, as well as younger people that come in with their mothers to print graduation and birthday party invitations.
According to some SMU students, the trend of formal invitations and the importance of RSVP-ing, seems to have gone astray. The most commonly used formal invitation, for kids in their teens, is for “Sweet 16s” or graduation parties.
“It was a formal party and I needed to know the number of people coming,” freshman Cameron Cain said about her 16th birthday party.
Because of this change, the importance of RSVP-ing is declining as well.
When asked how often she calls or writes back to respond to an invitation, Katie Tufts said, “Either my mom would RSVP or they would call us because we’d forget.”
And she’s not alone. Facebook invitations become infuriating to most people when invited guests can’t seem to commit to an event.
“I left the invite on Facebook pending,” Cain said. “It’s frustrating…I usually say maybe so I can keep my options open.”
This proves to be common for most, but on the other side can be inconvenient for a host wanting to know how many guests are coming. Cain said that she uses Facebook, but just sends a mass message to a group of friends for events like birthdays, New Year’s parties, and Thanksgiving dinners.
“People would reply, ‘yeah sounds good. I’ll let you know.’ It then became your job to get in touch with them later and have them confirm that they’re coming to the event. It’s really annoying,” Cain said.
