To expect parents to let me know if their child won’t be coming to the party

[EveryoneLeaveMeTheFuckAlone]

I’m hosting my first child’s birthday party tomorrow. We have had about five parents text to say thanks for the invite but they can’t make it. Absolutely fine. There are 18 parents who haven’t bothered replying at all. I’m making some spare party bags just in case extra kids turn up even though they haven’t RSVP. I just think it’s so rude not to say either way. DP thinks you only have to reply to confirm that you are attending the party but I thought you’d say if you couldn’t go. What do you do ?YABU - only reply to confirm attendance
YANBU - confirm either way

I would rsvp yes or no , on a good week. On a bad week i would stick it on the fridge until I could check the calendar ( dh) and then would forget. Thats if it made it out the book bag, I would suspect a lot of people do the same , try not to take it personally .

Yes I would reply either yes or no and thank you for the invite. If it was a paper invite they did get lost? Any class group you can follow up on?

I’ve also had yes replies that didn’t turn up and no message why. I’ve also had no replies turn up. And extra siblings last minute. Seems anything goes for some.

This is life/house admin. It's basic manners to reply. I get some people are disorganised but if you are, you have to overcompensate and develop strategies to remember things. That's what adults do.

YANBU. We’ve hosted a few kids’ parties now and always have a handful who don’t bother RSVPing. Everyone forgets occasionally, but I know from talking to other parents that in our case the same families don’t ever bother to RSVP so it’s just them being rude.

I know I’m a forgetful person by nature, so I don’t give myself the opportunity to forget. I check if I can attend and RSVP as soon as I see the invite. That’s what people who care about other people do- they recognise their forgetfulness and find ways to mitigate it. If you just throw your hands up and go “that’s just what I’m like!” then you don’t give a shit and that’s rude.

It is rude.

A great tip I read on here is that you only put a vague location on the invitation, eg “small town”, then when people RSVP they get the specific address - saves people turning up without RSVPing. Obviously it doesn’t work if you’re using a venue who give out their own invitations but it has been useful for us!

Yes it's rude. You either reply straight away or you make yourself a reminder to reply if you need to check something first like it might be a day for a family birthday or something.

I always reply whether we can attend or not.

Yes it's really rude. Pretty much everyone has a phone and can immediately check availability, and everyone's heard the story of the kid who had no one turn up to his birthday. Some of the mums who have had serious health issues still manage to reply, even though they're going through so much, because they care about the kids and don't want to mess the hosts around. You could try putting on the invitations, please can you reply yes or no by X date, and then send individual messages to anyone who hasn't saying you need to confirm numbers with the venue and haven't heard, so please can they reply tonight or you'll have to assume they aren't coming.

Yes i would replu either way but if people stop inviting the whole world to parties maybe people could stand down the PA they have to hire for people to have to manage all the invitations

Why do parties have to have such a large guest list

@EveryoneLeaveMeTheFuckAlone its unusual not to have had a reply from that many individuals.

If you invited the full class, usually half can make it. So don’t be surprised if 9 of those non repliers just show up.

I’m the same. People have busy lives. I also hated the whole class invitations in reception / year 1, especially for my DS with SEN. We tried taking him to the first one in reception but it was dreadful, he was running around and yeah … it was just embarrassing. The subsequent whole class invites were ignored because I couldn’t be bothered concocting excuses not to go.

Very rude and lazy.
Just reply immediately yeah or nay.

Really annoying, I hate organising parties for this reason. In future, I would only invite children of parents you know and have a phone number for, plus add in a deadline date to rsvp by.