The Etiquette Thread

[Deleted]

anne said:

Do you not think that people who throw a big wedding are deserving of gifts?

No, it's not that. I didn't really do a very good job of explaining the situation, did I? Well, originally this couple was eloping and thus requesting no gifts because they're both very well off and have been living together for a couple of years anyway. Now the bride's mother has put together a huge ceremony and they've registered at every expensive store in their vicinity for uber-expensive items that the bride's family, a quite wealthy bunch, can afford and at ... Target. For things they already have, like blenders and the rest, which are not as expensive and so can presumably be afforded by the groom's family. It just somehow rubs me the wrong way, even if it seems nice and thoughtful.

With the child care thing, I just assumed that you were responsible for some sort of arrangement, but if you're not then that's good. Load off of my mind because I certainly don't want children at my wedding.

[dnt]

I have no idea when Mr. DNT and I will ever get around to having a wedding, but I am opposed to registering for gifts. In my opinion, the idea of registering is to help young couples set up a home and we're in our thirties and have been living together for 8 years now. What's the appropriate thing to do in terms of handling wedding gifts? Just send out the invitations and if people call to ask, tell them to get whatever they feel like giving? At one point, I wanted to defer gifts altogether and ask people to make a donation to a few different charitiesw in our names, but Mr. DNT was opposed to that. Would that have been rude?

[anne]

I think that as uncomfortable as it seems, having a registry is the polite thing to do. For most weddings, you've got many people coming who WANT to give you a gift. Some of those people know you well, and could walk through a store, see something and think "That would be perfect for them". But many of those people don't know you well enough to do that. A registry serves as a guide for that. I do think it's polite of the couple of take into consideration the price level of the items they're registering for, and not have an entire registry of items that are $100 or more, screwing over anyone who didn't want to spend more than $25. But I think that having a registry is more polite than it feels like it is when you're putting it together.

I had a friend who got married this past summer, who did many unconventional things for her wedding, which essentially head-butted wedding etiquette. The worst offense, IMO, was that they set up their own personal website for their registry, rather than registering at a store. It came complete with a link to pay pal, and 100% of the items listed on it were cash gifts to them. They had things broken out such as "breakfast on our honeymoon" but wanted nothing but cash. The straw that broke the camel's back with me was the note on the registry which said "We know some of you are travelling to be with us for our wedding at a substantial expense to yourself. For those people, your presence is gift enough". The intent of the registry, and the "if you're travelling or helping with the wedding, that's gift enough" was very very good-hearted but it REALLY came across the wrong way.

[foxyepicurean]

This weekend I successfully defended wedding etiquette, and I'm quite proud of myself. My pretend little sister (the sister part is pretend, not the person) is getting married and was asking me about invitations and registries and such. I begged her not to put those little business cards in with the invitations, since it's so RUDE--all "make sure to get us a gift we want." She was on the fence about it (since everyone is doing it), but I convinced her to skip it. Her main problem with not including them was "How will people know where we're registered?" I told her that they can call one of the moms or someone in the wedding party--or they'll do what I do and check to see if the couple is registered at Target--everyone registers at Target, I've rarely checked for a registry that didn't exist. And if they don't check at Target (or Meier & Frank, the other popular registry choice in the couple's area), they'll probably give cash--and that's nice, too.

[zivvie]

Brides and grooms can also create wedding websites, or have pages at sites like theknot.com or weddingchannel.com. They can list all the registry and other pertinent info there, and it makes it easy for relatives to give out that info.

Please tell me if I'm being a prude in this situation: At the late-afternoon wedding I attended last week (the one I attended with the pianist {who played beautifully, no surprise}), I didn't know what the venue was going to be. It turned out to be a proper Catholic chapel, though it was not a Catholic wedding (this was printed on the wedding invitation, I later found out). Some of the wedding guests were wearing, quite frankly, too casual/inappropriate attire. At least one woman was wearing a strappy hoochie-mama top that showed more than half her chest, there were a fair amount of other too-tight dresses, and at least one male guest was wearing kinda crappy khakis and a crappy polo shirt. Is it too much to expect people to dress for the occasion?

{puts away rocking chair}

[batmom]

I'm constantly surprised by how dressed down people are these days. My uncle and one of my cousins wore baseball hats to my wedding (the other son, the one who's a drummer in a punk band called Nun Stalker, wore a suit. Go figure). Yes, it was an afternoon wedding, and yes, it was outside but... come on!

I feel old sometimes but is it really that hard to dress up? Is a nice polo shirt really more uncomfortable than your ratty old tshirt?

[foxyepicurean]

It's gotten to the point where I'm probably more surprised to see people dressed appropriately than I am to see them dressed inappropriately. It's not like I expect women to wear hats to weddings--I don't even expect them to wear nylons!--but I've seen people wearing jeans to weddings, and that's just a no-no. I suppose I should just resign myself to the decline of western civilization (pun intended).

As the Etiquette Grrls say, "Somewhere, someone is wearing a tube top in church...at a funeral." I used to go to their website every week till their lives got too busy and they stopped updating--the archives are searchable, though. I found their advice so helpful when planning my wedding. It's a good source for etiquette info, although I find that some of it doesn't really apply to me...they come from privileged New England backgrounds, and some of the things they call important etiquette would make me seem like a crazy alien if I tried to follow it in Boise.

I need to get a copy of their book, Things You Need to be Told. I've read enough excerpts to know it's a great etiquette guide--updated/modern enough, but still traditional.

[batmom]

I have a Miss Manners book, which I love. It's huge, so I read a little bit now and then, but I just love her style. It's good to keep me on my toes, too, making sure I'm considering the etiquette of everyday situations.

[dwanollah]

I'm not sure when we arrived at this notion of "If you invite me, you invite my children", but it is an assumption I do not agree with. If people respected the etiquette of an invitation in the first place (only brining who is actually invited) it would not be necessary to put such a note on an invitation.

I'm with you on that, anne. I realize some people think it's problematic to leave out their children at supposed "family" events like weddings, but really... it's the same thing if a friend or friends invite you over to dinner and you assume you can cart along the children. Unless the names appear on the invitation, they aren't invited.

For several reasons, we had a "grown-ups only" wedding, and my godmother got snippy and insisted that she should be able to bring her granddaughters anyway because "Mikayla and Isabella want to see a bride!" But... when we're paying approx. $80 a pop per head, and have a limited guest list, it fucks things up when someone wants to haul the chilluns with 'em. The other thing that I wanted to avoid was, since we were having a pretty intensely spiritual and solemn ceremony, the horrors of a child screaming, crying, or loudly announcing "ME GOTTA PEE PEE!"

Most of my family is sorely etiquette challenged anyway. We had more than one RSVP and write in extra names, or call and ask for "extra invitations" to send to family members we'd never met. But, knowing this, I could hardly be dismayed by stuff like the hootchie-mama gear on one cousin, the jeans on several others, or the one who wore (*gasp*) white. That shit doesn't really matter, although sometimes, admittedly, I'd like it if some of my family was a little less... well, tacky. ;D Then again, considering these are the meth-addicted, baby-makin' hooker cousins, inappropriate wedding attire was the least of their problems!

[Sunnyhorse]

Friend of mine reported that at one wedding she attended, a fellow female guest walked in late ... wearing an "Alf" T-shirt ... three sizes too small. Another friend who used to live in a town where Dwanollah's relatives would've felt right at home attended a wedding there. A fistfight broke out at the reception, and my friend swears that she overheard the following being shouted: "Tommy! Get off yer mother!"