Party of 1

I had a scrapbook party over the weekend (if you want to call it that; I invited folks to my house so I could show them ways to organize their photos and make albums. Maybe not a party, just a lame attempt at a sales pitch.) A few people responded to my invitation with regrets, but expressed an interest in purchasing some photo boxes. No one replied to say that they would be able to come. Many people just didn't respond at all. So, I brought out some of the order forms, catalogs and some products. I sat down and worked on my own album for a few hours, figuring that if anyone did show up, I was ready. It was a safe assumption that the people who didn't respond wouldn't come, for the most part (my aunt would have had a long car ride, DH's cousins never come to our house for anything,) but I would have liked to hear something. And one of the non-responders, who almost never comes to anything we invite her to, showed up to DS2's baptism after having not responded to the invitation (she assumed that having relayed to her MIL that she intended to come would have gotten the message to me.) So I didn't want to take any chances. As expected, no one came. I would have liked people to come and buy the stuff and spend some time chatting and such, but I wasn't going to get too worked up over it. Here's my issue, though. When did responding to invitations become optional? Am I off base to think that giving people two phone numbers and an email address on the invitation (with a note of "Please let me know whether or not you'll be able to make it") should mean that people might actually let me know?! Cleaning up after doing my own album, I got to thinking about parties and absences from such. I remembered a party I had in college, after my white-trash roommate moved out and I finally had the apartment to myself. Nobody came. And I decided that there is probably only one thing worse than having a party where no one shows up. That would be having a party where only one person shows up. At least no one witnessed what a loser I was.