"I should hope that even the most dense of people will respond 'by such and such a date,' or 'regrets only.' It's a terrible, terrible thing to do to your host. They don't know how many people to expect. What if you're having a dinner party for 12 and only six people show up? You have done so much work and now have too much food. Or on the other hand, people come and they bring a posse of 20 people: There you are stuck with all these extra people and not enough food or space," says Ervin, half of a Massachusetts writing duo known as the Etiquette Grrls, who also answer deportment questions on their Web site, www.etiquettegrrls.com.
Despite rampant bad behavior, many good hosts -- including Lesley Carlin, the other Etiquette Grrl -- try to be gentle when forced to conduct a pre-event census. "It is kind of awkward but there is a way to let the other person off easily by saying, 'Hey, I don't know if the invitation got lost in the mail.' It's a lot nicer than saying, 'You graceless clod.' "
Others take a tough-love approach with miscreants.
"I do not call people at all if they have not replied," says Gahl Hodges Burt, a White House social secretary under Nancy Reagan. "I assume that no one would not reply and then come. But I have been burned and that leaves me speechless. If I set a table for 10 and the 11th shows up, I hustle and make it happen. I also make a mental note to myself that this person is unreliable and should maybe be invited to a cocktail party instead of a seated dinner."
The printed RSVP card -- designed to combat the decline in formal, handwritten replies -- has undergone major change, says Leslie Reed, a senior vice president at the venerable stationer, Crane & Co., in Dalton, Mass.
"On a semiformal invitation, you will get a bride asking you to respond to a phone number or e-mail address. You'll also get 'How many for chicken, how many for beef?' or some other piece of information, like who needs transportation. Brides are trying to gather data. I am not saying this is correct from an etiquette standpoint, but they reflect the times."
Some hosts bypass paper altogether and e-mail invitations. Guests simply type 'yes' or 'no' and hit the send key.
In 1998, the Web site Evite -- a free, online organizing service -- was started to help arrange business events. But its social application soon became apparent. The site grew quickly. Last month, 7.8 million invitations to everything from baby showers to board meetings were posted on www.evite.com, says Stacey Smith, the site's sales and marketing director.
"From the party planner's point of view, it's such an easy tool to send all the invitations at once. Unlike printed invitations, you can see if guests open them and when. If it doesn't get opened, it probably means you have an incorrect e-mail address for someone," says Smith. "From the guest's point of view, it's easy to reply and you can leave a comment."
This dismays Post. "I would rather get the invitations out than not do it at all," he concedes, but e-mail represents further social erosion. "I know we are busy and have all this pressure. But take that moment to do something special and send a written invitation. I get a lot of bills, but I don't get very much fun mail. It stands out and is a physical reminder."
Having a printed invitation in hand has been helpful to Laura Cutler of Bethesda, who is currently planning her youngest child's bar mitzvah, having orchestrated two previous Jewish coming-of-age celebrations for a son and a daughter. With all three kids being asked to their friends' parties, the household social calendar can get very crowded.
"I group the invitations and keep them in a 'pending' file, and as the date gets closer I respond," Cutler says. "Someone, in fact, sent a very cute note to everyone, saying, 'We haven't heard from you. Now would be a good time.' It had all the particulars -- when and where to pick up the kids -- that people do not include in the invitation. It kind of prompted me on some of the other invitations."
Burt prefers a higher-tech approach. "I keep them all in an invitation file in my computer, hot-linked to my Palm Pilot. It works. My son is 17 and had a lot of 16th-birthday parties. He would give the invitations to me. Lots of times there were directions to some bizarre place, and I would give it to him the night of the party. My daughter is 12, the age where she is being invited to a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs."
Quick replies are essential for formal events because caterers require head counts. So do hosts who want their B-list backups to replace A-list guests who have declined.
