Birthday party ignorance

[superdupernamechange]

Long story short -
I sent out birthday invites over a week ago to the children invited to my child's 5th birthday party. (Let's say around 15 children were invited)
The invites were a bit badly put together (printed them myself) but I included the information -
"(Insert name here)'s birthday party"
"Date and location"
"Time of party"
"Phone number - any questions please ask" (yes I definitely wrote the phone number down correctly)
"Please RSVP by (insert date) with name of child and whether you are able to attend, thank you."
It's been over a week now and I have not had a single reply.
There is only a few days left until the RSVP date.
I'm unable to chase the matter up with most of the parents, for a number of reasons. (Silly reasons, but I am unable to nonetheless)

Would it be unreasonable of me to cancel the party if I receive no replies by the RSVP date?
This seems like the most logical thing to do.

My worry with this is that people will still turn up, even having not bothered to respond. They will then be met with no party and I will be the bad guy at the school gates for letting their children down.

On the other hand, why would I go ahead with something that quite possibly nobody will turn up to. I don't want them to think the world revolves around them, and that I will go ahead with it even with no responses.

What would you do?
This is my first time planning something like this and I am really stuck for what to do.
Thanks.

I just want to add I won't cancel without a word, I would definitely find a way to get the word out at least a week before party

Can I just give an alternative perspective. When my youngest was in reception, I was recently split from her dad and he did every other weekend.

I wouldn't be able to answer for his weekend - and he usually didn't take kids to parties or let the parents know for his weekends.

I had a party for my eldest son when turning four and only three children turned up, my son was devastated and really upset and I was heartbroken and had a huge party bill to pay, this is why I don’t do parties anymore people are rude and inconsiderate. I’d cancel and tell your lovely child your going to “theme park” for the day instead and she can choose a nice evening meal takeaway!

Why not just invite a few kids who you know 100% will turn up so your child still has the excitement of a party. Cousins, neighbours, friend's kids, their siblings, whatever it takes to make up a few numbers. At 5 yrs old, they will be happy with 3-5 other kids celebrating. If anyone from the class shows up then that's an extra bonus.

Tbh considering there are 0 RSVPs and the parents have zero contact with each other, I think it's more likely that very few or nobody will show up on the day. They are not waiting until last minute to RSVP because a date like that gets almost immediately forgotten. People will accept the party immediately and write it in their calendar or forget about it completely.

I completely appreciate this point of view, thank you.
That must have been difficult for you.
I do notice a lot of parents split pick ups between them and there could well be miscommunications between people about things like this x

Could you pass all the parents of girls a note saying We hope you received the invite to DD’s party on X Datex X time at X venue. The venue need final numbers very soon and so I’d be grateful if you could confirm whether your daughter is able to come, or not. You can message me, DD’s mum, on 0123456789 or give me the reply slip below at pick up this week. Thank you!’ …and then do a little tear off reply slip with a space to write their name and tick yes or no’

As others have said, speak to the mum you’ve chatted to before. Ask if her DD can come and ask if she has any other parent details. If so, contact them and ask if they know any others.

If you could do that, presumably you could get the word out that people need to reply...

This is what worries me. I'm sorry that happened to your son. It really is heartbreaking for a parent to see your child so disappointed.
This is seriously what I am considering.

She is the only child in the family, the only other children she knows (school kids) are the ones we have invited. Thats it.
It does very much seem like these things go one of 2 ways. And sadly this time.. not looking like the way I'd have liked it.
If worst comes to worst.. at least she will have 18 party bags to herself !!

As you are right at the start of your school journey you are going to soon realise that not all parents act and think in the same way you do

You say you would reply right away and you would always check your child’s bag each day. That’s great but not all parents will for a multitude of reasons. You will need to have some alternative strategies in place that accommodates all types of parents

This .Askyour daughter to point out who she has invited.

I just had my 5th dd party

My first thoughts are did you put the correct number on the invites ? Or have you set your what's up to only accept messages from numbers saved in your phone ?

I invited the whole class to my dd 4th birthday party. I got 5 yeses and 45 children showed up. People can be proper lax.

I wouldn't cancel tbh. I would check that something hadn't else gone on.

Also it maybe that people find it bit odd your only inviting girls to the party and no boys allowed . Totally understandable that a child would want to invite their friends, but children aged 5 don't often discriminate via sex with their playmates imo.

Also I just got added to what's up group for school. No idea it existed until someone added me. Try your schools fb page - usually a fb group bouncing around...

Sorry but it really is helpful to talk to other parents, you need to try. Could you at least pick out one mum of a girl at pick up/drop off? And just ask her if she'd received an invite as your concerned there's been no replies. People can be lax, but it's weird that there hasn't been at least one reply!

If you aren’t sure then cancel the party room. Speak to the venue and explain you haven’t had any replies. You could still do soft play at the venue and if anyone does turn up just order food from the venue and bring your own birthday cake and have it more casual.

@superdupernamechange
Maybe not for you, but for me, things like this are definitely difficult and I definitely do find it a big deal.
If you want your DD to have a social life you'll need to make an effort and push yourself, this is really silly that you can't follow any advise here and speak to parents or perhaps do some more invites and hand them out at bring or end of day with DD in tow.

I've had the opposite.

Organised a party for my DD when she was 7, invited her whole class, and no-one turned up despite 24 out of 26 saying they'd come. Was gutting, wish they'd told me so I could of made alternative arrangements.

If lots of the parents don't speak English as a first language you're going to have to be brave and grab them in the playground.

Get there a bit early and every girl that comes out, approach the parent and say 'hi I'm Lily's mum, did you get an invite to her party on x date?' and ask them outright if they're coming.
Ask for their phone numbers if they say they're coming - then you can text a reminder the day before.

Start tomorrow, grab people every morning and afternoon and by the RSVP date you'll have a good idea who's coming.

Put them all on a whatsapp group, and chase for answers on that, saying 'just to make things easier, thought I would set up the group'. Start with a photo of the Invite.

I had a similar situation when DS was in reception - 20 invitations... 2 replies and TWENTY SEVEN children turned up as some parents bought siblings too.

I prepared DS for a little tea party with the 2 that replied and quietly piled crisps, party bags, biscuits, sweets, sandwiches and a cake in the shed... JUST IN CASE because I knew similar things had happened to friends of DD. I planned to get DP to drop it off at the local homeless shelter if we didn't use it.

Not one of them apologised for not replying but DS had an amazing party and a huge heap of presents. The house was mayhem

It's a minefield - I literally ended up planning 2 types of party so as to make it as good as possible for DS whatever happened. I don't know why people are so awful about replying it's not complicated.

I have hosted whole class parties every year for a decade and never encountered people not RSVPing and showing up anyway.

Late RSVPs do happen though, there will almost always be someone that RSVPs at 10pm the night before the party along with 2 or 3 'sorry can no longer make it' texts in the few days before (but the drop out and later RSVPs roughly evens out so its never been an issue for us).

I think the issue might actually be you gave them out too early.

If I'd received a party invitation for my Reception child from a child who I probably had no idea who she was, I'd hold off responding until I was sure we weren't doing anything else - harsh but true.

IME most people reply close to the RSVP date, having filed the invitation under "worry about this later" but I totally agree that you should start proactively asking whichever parents you see.

I've also never had a child turn up unexpectedly for a party and my children are now teenagers. Whilst accepting it might happen, I think your worry about loads of people turning up is unfounded. And if any try to dump siblings, blame calmly say that the soft play place will only let in children on the party list and they'll have to pay for their child themselves if they want them to come in.

Oh this happened to me, it’s an awful feeling, I even collared one parent in the playground to ask if he’d received the invite because I was worried they hadn’t been handed out and he said ‘yes, we got it’ and walked away and still never replied, in the end most RSVP’d about a week before and about 5 RSVP’d the night before. People can be so inconsiderate!

In my experience people do just turn up without RSVPing but I can see why you're worried with no replies at all.

There might be a private facebook page for parents of children at the school. It would be ok to post something like 'could everyone invited to x's party in reception please let me know if you can make it, thanks' I've seen a few messages like that on the fb page for my child's school.

I’m new to all this as well but … if you decide to cancel, coullotes you not just ask the teacher to put a “party cancelled “ note in each of the girls’ bags? So that way surely if they received the initial invitation, they’re very likely to receive the cancellation as well.

Yes you are going to have to do this.. its a rubbish situation without names / numbers but at least its not cliquey..you will need to be assertive and ensure that at least 4 girls are coming..you have the rest of the week to stalk people.....!!! Then you can go ahead with party knowing someone is coming and your DD will have a ball.. More will come than you expect. Then get all these numbers and make the class what's app group and you will be a legend.. bday parties are unnecessarily stressful and people are so rude but this is normal.