RSVP – Does Anyone Know The Meaning?
I wonder if people have any idea what the abbreviation RSVP means. We are planning a reception for our wedding – we eloped, I’ll go into that some other time – but we planned a family get together to celebrate and sent out invitations about two months ago. The invite expressly said RSVP by 7/31. Just one look at the calendar and you can see that date is rapidly approaching and we are still waiting on approximately 70% of the invitees to get back to us. So is it complete ignorance of the part of the invitees or rudeness? I’m not sure I like either option.
In case anyone out there is in the dark or perhaps just not fluent in French, the term RSVP comes from the French expression “répondez s’il vous plaît”, meaning “please respond.” It is my pet peeve when people put Please RSVP on invitations because that just is redundant, but with the lack of responses to my invites, I’m beginning to understand the Please RSVP concept – an inviter needs to beg an invitee to come to the event! I should have included a nice “with a cherry on top” to the bottom of my Please RSVP, maybe that would have helped?
When I was in Los Angeles it was not uncommon for people to not RSVP or if they did tell you they were coming, they wouldn’t 100% commit. They would come for the stop by, pop over, or maybe make an appearance. To commit to an event a few weeks out was a virtual impossibility to 99% of the people I knew. Then there was always the commitment without follow through, better known as the blow off. I got so used to that commonplace practice that I found myself doing it too – not committing, blowing people off, etc – hey if they can do it, I can do it, right?
Fast forward to planning a pretty much family event, a simple clambake to get the family together to celebrate what people tell me is one of the most important days of your life, our wedding. Invitations out in a timely fashion, and then crickets from the peanut gallery. I ask, how difficult is it to:
A. look at your calendar and
B. call and say, yes I can come or no I can’t.
All I can think about is family and friends sitting waiting for last minute because they might have to what, go give their dog a perm? Alphabetize their sock drawer by height? Learn Sanskrit? Get invited to their friends house for a riveting game of pinochle? I don’t know about them, but my life has never been that interesting.
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