RSVPs serve a purpose, if only people would respond

If you're throwing a New Year's Eve party, I'm willing to bet four little letters have caused you one big headache: RSVP.

Not because folks get busy this time of year. Not because your guests might be out of town, either. The ol' RSVP plagues many a gracious host simply because partygoers today have no respect for it.

This is not a hasty judgment, my friends. This is a well-researched conclusion that comes after having hosted many a house party, several small soirees and one wedding.

You can ask your guests to prepare a dish. You can ask them to kindly remove their shoes. You can ask them to keep their babies with the baby sitter. But asking them to RSVP is like asking them to do whatever it was that Meat Loaf was asked to do in his hit song of the early '90s. They will do anything for a party. But they won't do that. No, they won't do that.

Don't believe me? Plan a wedding. Everyone from our day-of wedding coordinator to our friends who recently married warned us that "people don't RSVP." Even our invitation designer advised us to save money on the response cards because we would end up calling everyone for an answer, anyway.

Just the thought of hunting people down to ask if I could please provide them with dinner, bottomless bottles of liquor and the kind of DJ that would have them dancing until it hurt, made me want to slap our guests before I even had a chance to invite them.

We thought that might make the walk down the aisle a little awkward, though, so we set up a website with an RSVP page instead. Ya know, to make things as easy as possible on the heathens.

No laborious check marks next to "yes" or "no" and no long, painful walks to the mailbox. Just a couple clicks of courtesy.

We didn't expect every guest to hit up the website all formallike. A simple email, phone call, text message or honk of the horn while shouting, "Yo, I'll be there," would have sufficed. But, some of our guests surprised us and actually did as the invitations instructed.

I decided these anomalies must have fallen into one of three categories: The guests who have been on the other end of the wedding RSVP; the guests who were raised by someone who lived by the gospel of Emily Post; and the guests who knew I would harass them harder than Herman Cain if they didn't.

I worked as a credit card collector during college. I know how to track someone down and get an answer. When the RSVP deadline came and went, I went after my answers and I got them. Too bad some of them were about as firm as a waterbed.

Here's what you learn when forced to use RSVP force. People are afraid to say no. Scratch that. People are terrified to say no.

They will tell you all about their money problems, son's football game or their great grandma's birthday party that lands on the day of your wedding. But they won't tell you no. They will tell you they'll do their best, try really hard or see if they can get out of a prior engagement. But they won't tell you no. Even if they know damn well that, on the night of your wedding, they will be counting their money woes, cheering their son's touchdown pass or partying it up with Great Grandma.

This is why these people don't RSVP to weddings. Because you will never find a formal invitation with an unchecked box next to the words "going to try really hard." I think it has something to do with food, beverages and seating -- nothing important. Caterers speak many languages, but they don't speak maybe.

RSVP deadbeats, take this piece of advice. Instead of giving hosts and hostesses the runaround, give them a little Nancy Reagan circa 1985: Just. Say. No.

That way we can still respect you in the morning. The people we can't respect? Well, the no-shows, of course. If there's a caterer involved, it's a heinous offense. If there's no caterer, it's rude, but forgivable if you're rocking a hospital ID bracelet or even a concert bracelet the next day.

The RSVP deadbeat and the no-show frustrate hosts, but they don't completely boggle them. That's the job of the Evite creeper. He's the guest who opens the electronic invitation to your costume party 30 seconds after you email it, but doesn't RSVP. Not knowing Evite informs the host every time someone views the invitation, the creeper checks back regularly, sometimes daily. But, he still doesn't RSVP. He just creeps.

So, what's he waiting for? I'll never know. What I do know is that far too many guests commit party fouls before the party has even started.

Every year Las Vegas hosts the biggest New Year's Eve party around. This year, 314,000 "guests" are expected. Not only are they certain to leave a mess, but I doubt even one of them RSVP'd.

Xazmin Garza's X=Why column appears Sundays in the Living section. Contact her at xgarza@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0477. Follow her on Twitter @startswithanx.