répondez s'il vous plaît (RSVP)

My daughter is turning five on the 27th, so we decided to have a little party for her on Saturday instead of the big monster parties we have had the last 2 years. She wanted a bowling party with about 12 of her friends. I made the reservations and was told I needed to supply a head count on the Thursday before. I sent out really cute little invitations that stated all of this on the 6th to give people plenty of time. It's the beginning of Spring Break, so we expected some not to be able to make it. And I waited...and waited. We heard from her best friend's Mom, but no one else. Normally I send out invitations via evite.com, but I wanted to do these cute little pink purse shaped invites that I had found. Evite is great because you can see who has looked at the invitation, who's responded and they get reminders. I tend to be a little anal about RSVPs. I always respond as soon as possible to invites. When you are planning a party you just have to know how many people are coming. As of yesterday I was starting to get nervous. Hubby thought that since I had forgotten to state "no gifts please" on the invite that I could use that as an excuse to send out the invitation again via evite.com just as a reminder. Finally people started responding. I can see who has looked at it and not responded yet, which is frustrating! Why do people seem to ignore the RSVP? Every time we have a party I deal with this crap. Why is it so hard to let people know if you're coming or not? I always supply a phone number and an email address, so there really is no excuse. I still have not heard from quite a few of the parents and I have to give a head count on Thursday. I know from past experience that people just show up the day of the party, but frankly that's just plain rude. I have no idea what I'm going to say to the lady when I call her.
Well anyway....sorry, just needed to vent on a PMS-y kind of day!
Cheers!