I shall never forget the first important dinner I organized decades ago for the chairman of an American bank. I had spent the whole day organizing a seating plan with the bank staff for over 100 guests and felt quite accomplished after having laid out what I thought was a pretty good plan. But disaster struck within ten minutes of the cocktail! I saw a politician who was not expected come into the room. I was then told by an important guest that he and his wife would only stay for drinks. At that moment I made the decision, at the consternation of the guest of honor, to pull out all the name cards except for the head table which was shuffled several times before the meal began.
I can think of two hosts who succeed with seating plans – one is the US Ambassador and the other is Washington Sycip. Aside from being popular hosts with excellent attendance ratings to their parties, I guess that their technique is to have someone assigned to greet guests and make last minute adjustments. I was tasked with this job at one fund- raising dinner. The organizers had come from New York and had assigned one American VIP guest to each table so they could meet their Filipino counterparts. It was a nightmare for me to predict if people who had confirmed would arrive to fill the seats.
It is particularly difficult to plan very formal business dinners with Japanese or Chinese guests who expect certain protocol and standards. Close attention must be given to seating guests appropriately depending on rank. For example, with a small table, the guest of honor should be placed facing the door with his back against the room’s focal point, with the host across the table. So it becomes very embarrassing when other guests fail to show up especially if a guest list was provided to the guest of honor. I was invited to a dinner for a visiting government official and his wife from Indonesia and was told that two Philippine government officials and their wives were also attending. In the last minute, one couple backed out, and the other official arrived without his wife. So we ended up having a very lopsided table.
After years of observation, my estimate is that there is an attrition rate of at least 10 percent averaging 20 percent of "no-shows" from a confirmed guest list. This means that one or two out of a dinner for 10 persons will probably call at the last minute to say they cannot come. This equates to 20 or two tables of 10, out of a party of 100. These numbers may be greater (20 to 30 percent) for large banquets or fund raisers and especially cocktails.
A finicky host who hates having empty seats has several options. One, assign two waiters to take out pre-assigned tables through a back door. Two, assume that ten percent will not show up. Prepare a table for nine instead of 10 and add table settings and chairs stacked in a corner as guests arrive during cocktails. A dangerous option is to invite more people than there is room. Or, during the Marcos years, the Palace would have security guards in Barong Tagalog fill up seats until guests arrived.
How we developed such a habit of "no-show" informality towards invitations is a puzzle. How we change to be more in line with less forgiving international standards is an even greater challenge. I must confess it is quite impressive to attend a function in cities like Tokyo or New York and to have every seat filled at the same time. I also admit that it is really stressful being a host to a party with last minute no-shows. My own resolution is to be more punctual for invitations to spare the host the anxiety of guessing whether I am attending or not. Another resolution for all is to have the courage not to RSVP "yes" when we do not mean it.