RSVP SOS
Founded in 2020, the venture-backed Partiful has become the talk of the town in online invites and is trying to grow beyond the casual hang to take on save the dates and wedding invites. But it's competing in a crowded marketplace of companies looking to get ROI from your RSVP. There's the new Apple Invites and Shine Parties (from former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's AI company Sunshine) and also Luma, all of which echo Partiful's playful vibe. There are early adopters like Evite and Paperless Post, which are known for email invitations more than texts. And then there's a chaotic flurry of other ways to ask people to come to your hang: group chats, email threads, Instagram close friends stories, Snapchats, Canva cards, and the dying art of a phone call.
When our phones endlessly ping with invites, it's harder to understand what we're attending and what's expected of us.
Landon says using Partiful "really does help set the tone" of whatever event she's hosting, whether it's a New Year's Eve party or a Seder. The app's cute aesthetic leans more fun than formal, with the ability to make bubbles and confetti move across the screen and add personalized GIFs. But that also can be cringe to older invitees, and the option to have guests Venmo funds toward your party upon RSVP'ing could send most over 40 into an etiquette tailspin. Tech should have made invites seamless. But there's no consensus on a straightforward, non-cringe, anxiety-quelling way to earnestly ask people to show up for you. There are too many ways to send invites running into too many ways to receive them — and ultimately, some people will still ignore an invite or choose not to show up. RSVP etiquette seems to have died off just as flaking has risen to a social norm.
Welcome to the age of invitation overload.
"It's exhausting," Fernanda Read tells me of the state of invitations. The founder of the luxury travel company At The Top But Not Alone says she prefers "whatever doesn't require me to make a new account." Read, 43, recently received a wedding invite in a group text and on WhatsApp and was thrown into a sea of dozens of unknown phone numbers. That wasn't any better, she says: "It's just a hot mess."
Emily Post would drop an f-bomb if she were alive today to see the chaotic state of invitation etiquette.
In the past year, I've received invites for: an adult's birthday party in a vacant lot, replete with live reptiles, sent via Partiful; a wedding via Paperless Post; a 30th birthday marked with a Canva-made card sent in a chatty group text (cute, but I made the mistake of not saving the image and struggled to remember what time dinner started); and a barbecue using Facebook that I had no idea about until the friend texted me a few days before wondering whether I was coming. People take to Reddit to ask repeatedly what invite platforms are best for communicating across groups, what they should use for a toddler's birthday, or whether digital invites for a wedding are tacky.
Emily Post would drop an f-bomb if she were alive today to see the chaotic state of invitation etiquette. I spoke with experts on manners and invitations as well as the self-appointed event coordinators of their friend groups about how they navigate the stress and anxiety of modern party planning and why they're brave enough to keep inviting people to get together.
However they're sent, all invites should receive replies, no matter how formal or informal, says Myka Meier, founder of the etiquette school Beaumont Etiquette. But those that are personalized and actually address the invitee, whether on Evite or in a call or text, are likely to influence the receiver to feel their presence at an event is more important. "If they feel like there was little effort put into the invitation, you'll see probably little effort for the reply," Meier says.
The way an invite goes out may seem like a small detail, but it can make or break a gathering. "How you communicate things is very important, and it influences what the person understands about the event," says Alexa Hirschfeld, a cofounder of Paperless Post, which has sent nearly a billion invites since 2009 and focuses on more formal events, like weddings, showers, and milestone birthdays.
Since the dawn of online invitations some 30 years ago, we've made the invite process messier. Various invite companies may encourage people to download apps; Partiful prompts guests to RSVP before revealing the event's location or other attendees (which can leave hosts with handfuls of maybes, a Type A planner's nightmare). New York Tech Week caused drama earlier this month by requiring all official events to use Partiful — Andreessen Horowitz, which ran the latest iteration of Tech Week, is also an investor in Partiful, leading the app's $20 million Series A in 2022. The move left Tech Week attendees confused about whether they should look to Luma or Partiful for events.
We've "strayed from the light," when it comes to planning, says Tyler Bainbridge, a former software engineer at Meta who's the 29-year-old founder of the new social network PI.FYI. Since many have abandoned their Facebook accounts, there's been nothing like the site's events feature to help people discover events as seamlessly — Bainbridge says he'll often see a post on Instagram for an event and think, "That looks amazing," but it's easily lost. "You can't actually see which of your friends are going," he says. "They may have 2,000 likes, but who's actually going to the thing? And, it's easy to forget about them." He says PI.FYI is working on its own events feature, which would draw people more to community events they have an interest in, much like Facebook has done.
Invites matter, but maybe the platforms they're sent on don't.
For many younger hosts, Partiful is the standout replacement. Kirsten Meyer, a 25-year-old in Portland, Oregon who works in public relations, swears by the app to send out invites even when a gathering includes just a handful of people. (On TikTok, people make videos about asking someone on a date via Partiful or setting up time for crash-out convos with a bestie.) She's hosted a murder-mystery-themed party, a "Love Island" watch party, and a Beer Olympics. Customizing the invites instead of just sending a text, she says, helps "to get the vibe and theme across" and conveys that people better come prepared to play their part.
Partiful declined to share specific numbers on invites with me, but Jess Eames, head of the company's business and product operations, tells me in an email that Partiful has hosted tens of millions of invites. Birthdays are popular, but so is "throwing parties without any particular reason — just for the sake of partying," Eames says, and weddings are becoming more common on the app, too.
Invites matter, but maybe the platforms they're sent on don't. Sukhi Sahni takes party planning so seriously that her friends have jokingly dubbed her the chief administrative officer of her WhatsApp chat, the NOVA gang (short for Northern Virginia, where she and a few other longtime friends live). She has hosted big events like Christmas and Diwali celebrations, but she also helps make personalized invites for different members of the group's birthdays, sometimes sending out videos that feature photos of the honoree and include a voice memo at the end with the pertinent details. "When you see yourself in something, you are more likely to connect," Sahni, a public relations marketing executive, tells me. Right now, the group is in the middle of a big milestone: Several members are turning 50. But it's not just the lead up to the event — Sahni tells me she will also often take the photos from the event and turn them into a picture book as a gift. Part of what makes these events so successful is that people trust that when Sahni is behind the planning, it's going to turn out well. That meant building trust over multiple gatherings and sending people nudges and reminders to set expectations about RSVP'ing.
Hosting for big groups in 2025 means fighting against the norm of ghosting and cancelling plans. Some have given up on nailing down the head count. Tom O'Malley, a 40-year-old in Springfield, New Jersey, is in 159 group chats — some with friends, but many with parents from his kids' school or soccer club. His family hosts two large get-togethers a year (for back to school and St. Patrick's Day) and smaller ones monthly. O'Malley tells me his wife will make an invite card on Canva and then email it to some people and text blast it to others.
There's no good way to track who is coming with that method, but O'Malley has found that it doesn't matter. Yes, some people who RSVP don't turn up anyway, leaving his family with too much leftover food and beer. But now, O'Malley takes more of a "throw it out there and see what happens" approach. Despite people being flaky, he says, those who have shown up have a new look on gathering and may be more likely to come back. "I forgot that this was super nice," he says some people have told him. By letting go of anxiety around hosting and high expectations of others, he's been liberated, and it makes him a more relaxed host and the parties more enjoyable. "To be the kind of social beacon to some degree," he says, "you kind of just have to be willing to do that."
I've been planning a birthday party for the end of this month, a task I find increasingly embarrassing as a person fully in my 30s still desperately awaiting RSVPs. I defaulted to Partiful, as it seemed the method my different groups of friends would all be most likely to use, and I was happy it took on the task of sending nudges to invited guests to commit and reminders to show up. Despite sending out the invite weeks in advance for a Sunday afternoon hang, I'm dealing with an accordion effect when it comes to attendees; the numbers rise and fall as people change their plans, and a handful of "maybe" replies taunt me, sparking an internal debate as to whether I should splurge for a bigger reservation (logically, I know that "maybe" probably means "no," and I may end up with fewer guests and extra money on the tab that leaves me bitter on a day that's meant to be fun specifically for me). In my nightmares, everyone flakes, and I'm left at the roller rink alone. But I'm trying to take some advice and optimism from the star hosts I spoke with for this story: plan the day, let go, and hope people remember that it's nice to gather together.
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