8 Polite Ways to Decline a Party Invitation
When you get invited to a wedding or a party, “yes” might feel like the only socially acceptable response. If your RSVP is something short of that, you might put off responding at all—or stumble into a response that’s unintentionally rude.
“We’re raised to be polite or not rock the boat and to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and yet in trying to be nice, we end up being vague and unclear and often more hurtful than if we were just candid,” says Priya Parker, a conflict resolution facilitator and author ofThe Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. “There are so many ways to decline with grace, but instead of saying we’d rather not, we flake, or we’re ambivalent and say ‘maybe,’ which is horrible for the host.”
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When opting out of a gathering, Parker recommends following this formula: acknowledge the invitation; honor something about it, like the host’s creativity or vision; express gratitude for the fact that they thought of you; and then..