Manolo for the Brides

As a guest, I tend to tune out wedding speeches unless I’m familiar with both the object of the speech (i.e., the bride or groom) and the speech giver. Listening to 45 minutes of daddy waxing on misty-eyed about his little girl’s swimming trophies for 45 minutes a la Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason tends to put me into a fugue state wherein I eat far too much cake and the champagne in my glass keeps disappearing mysteriously.

The bride and groom, however, are typically quite interested in what everyone has to say because they are the ones being talked about! I know that I was particularly looking forward to the best man’s speech at my own wedding because he’s such a tremendously sweet fellow and I was hoping he’d say something nice about me or us. Let it be known that he did not disappoint, and the air was full of Awwws and little sniffs the whole time he had the mic.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to take a stab at wowing the crowd, but he was indeed a tough act to follow. The Beard’s mother told a story about car thievery, and an uncle of mine saw fit to remind everyone that he’d changed my diapers when I was but a wee lass. I even vaguely remember one of my brothers getting on the mic to tell assembled loved ones that he’d met The Beard in Nam and that we’re both “slick ballers.”

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So you opened your mail one day recently and found a shimmery pale pink envelope (or a lush, chocolate one, or an austerly elegant ivory-colored one, or one you could barely read through the bright purple printing on cherry red paper) containing a wedding invitation. Perhaps it was one you’d been expecting for weeks. Perhaps it was one you had no clue was coming. Perhaps you are so close to the couple you took part in the invitation addressing party. Perhaps you have to desperately scan your every childhood memory to even figure out who the happy couple might be and why they sent you an invitation to witness their marriage.

Whatever the case, there are things you can do to make sure that you’re the sort of guest people want to invite to other events after this one is over and done with.

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Over and over again on bridal fora, wedding reality shows, and in private conversation with soon-to-be-brides I’ve heard women talk about how they won’t be ‘doing all that etiquette stuff’ or they won’t allow etiquette to force them into doing things that make them uncomfortable. What boggles my mind most of the time is that the things they’re talking about aren’t in any way required by etiquette. In fact, they are often the antithesis of proper etiquette.

In a recent article at MSN.com discussing weddings, Judith Martin (aka: Miss Manners) had this to say about the subject:

I did a wedding book some years ago and I am revising it because there have been all kinds of horrible new ideas that have sprung up since I first wrote it. And people have come to believe a lot of misinformation that they are getting from those who have a financial interest in the situation, to the point where they’re pressured to do things that are, again, vulgar and greedy.

Miss Manners, I look forward to seeing your new volume on the subject. In the meantime, here are a few pernicious wedding ‘etiquette’ myths along with the real skinny.

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Recently, one of my favorite online comics has included wedding planning in one of its many story arcs, and I thought I’d share some of the nuptial nuttiness with you. Here is some schooling on how to have a wedding, the Achewood way:

“any cake is a wedding cake if you call it that”

“Oh how genius to have the invitation and the program all in one man I TOTALLY saved cash. I am the graphic designer of the AGE.”

“Men in neckties do not wish to be hugged. Men in turtlenecks expect hugs at each encounter, no matter how trivial. Men in fezzes are unpredictable, and may be at your wedding for reasons that are unclear to you.”

There are few things I love so much in life as a great story. If there’s a little bitter bite to the story, so much the better, I admit it. Tales of other peoples’ disasters tend to be a lot more entertaining than concentrating on your own miseries, after all. It feels good to be able to point and laugh and say ‘better someone who isn’t me than me.’ I’m not proud of it, no, but there it is.

Thus it is that one of my favorite haunts to visit on the net is Etiquette Hell. There I can have my fill of cautionary tales about brides run amok and flower girls mooning the congregation, of grooms gone gaga and guests who have sadly left all their couth at home for the event. From ring bearers who drop the rings to bakers who drop the cake, it’s all there in glorious Technicolor and four-part harmony…with feeling.

Some highlights include the couple who noted a $115.00 cover charge for their wedding on the invitation, the maid of honor who didn’t invite the other two bridesmaids to the shower, the groom’s family who take over the entire process…without putting up one red cent, the vindictive ex-girlfriend of the groom who tipped off the police about where to find him to arrest him on an outstanding warrent on his wedding day at the altar, and of course multiple cases of actual assault.

If you need a little perspective (or a bit of etiquette advice), I highly recommend Etiquette Hell. Oh, and while you’re there, check out their recently added feature The Library which houses works on etiquette ranging from George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior In Company and Conversation up to the 1922 edition of Emily Post.

Now, back to those tales of woe. Heh, heh.

Writer and filmmaker Elise Mac Adam certainly knows her stuff, if her essays on Indiebride are any indication. Those quirky columns were my introduction to her sharp, spot-on way of schooling brides-to-be — and everyone else — in the fine art of etiquette. I remember looking through the site’s archives (Dear Indiebride, Update your site more often, Kthnxbye) and being tickled by these words:

“Bridezilla” is a special kind of insult — too cute to mean anything serious, yet devastatingly demeaning. To call a woman “Bridezilla,” even if her prima donna antics put Diana Ross to shame, categorizes her bad behavior as a comic “syndrome.”

So when I was offered an opportunity to check out Mac Adam’s new book, Something New: Wedding Etiquette for Rule Breakers, Traditionalists, and Everyone in Between, I naturally said, “Heck yeah! Send it over!” Then, of course, life intervened and I had no time at all to read, which is why the book has been sitting on my coffee table for the last month.

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Few and far between are the lucky individuals who haven’t found themselves simultaneously single and invited to a wedding. If you’re invited as a onesome, the pressure’s off, and you can start worrying about what to wear and how you won’t know anyone at the reception and whether the buffet will include anything you, a vegan with a gluten allergy, can safely eat. It’s when your invitation comes addressed to “you plus one” that the fun begins.

Anon wrote in to ask about this very topic.

I (a straight female) received an invitation this week from a college friend, inviting me-plus-guest to her wedding. My immediate reaction, since I’m not dating anyone and don’t really want to scrape someone up to go to a wedding in another state, was to RSVP for myself alone. Then I remembered that my sister also knew the bride in college, as well as a lot of the other guests I’d assume are being invited. Would it be a no-no to bring my sister as my guest? Will it throw off the girl-boy ratio and ruin the wedding if I bring an extra female, rather than the expected extra male or coming alone? Is it weird to invite someone that the bride was friends with, but who she didn’t invite to the wedding herself? If I don’t have a date-date, should I just save the bride and groom the cost of another plate and go by myself? Am I just overthinking this and making a bigger deal of it than I should?

In the realm of traditional etiquette, it’s a well-established fact that one should never address an invitation to “and guest” or “plus one.” The bride and groom should invite those people they are close to, paying attention to social units and finding out the names of everyone’s significant others. It’s not gauche to invite solo guests — far from it, in fact! A friendly, outgoing single can have a marvelous time at a wedding.

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In the past few weeks I have received not one, but two e-mails from curious readers with questions about invitation etiquette. Their questions were not, as you might imagine, about the sending of invitations or the wording of invitations, but rather about declining invitations. I was frankly amazed at how similar the two queries were, so I’m only going to feature one of them here.

I was recently sent a “save the date” card by a friend who is, well, no longer really a friend. Not that we had a falling out, but we don’t really travel in the same social circles anymore. However, I was in the couple’s life when they became a couple, and I’m so happy for the two of them. I’m not sure what to do. I wonder if she invited me because she felt she should because I knew about the wedding? I wonder if I’ll just feel terribly socially awkward the whole time? I wonder if people will think I accepted just to get a free meal, rather than to celebrate the union of these two people? Would the bride be happier if I accepted or if I declined?

To anyone,anywhere contemplating an invitation to an event they’d rather not attend, I say this: Not replying at all is a dis of the highest order. While it might seem that dragging one’s feet until it’s far to late to reply is the easiest option, there are some things polite people simply do not do. That’s not to say I was suggesting that either party who wrote to me would do such a thing. Far from it! It’s simply a gem of truth that bears repeating now and again.

If you feel uncomfortable accepting an invitation to a bridal tea, bridal shower, or wedding, then by all means decline. There is nothing discourteous or ungracious about saying, “No.” When it comes to the invites to the main event, it’s usually as easy as pie…at least I’ve never seen a response card that reads “______ declines with regrets, now tell us why in 500 words or less _________.” If you’re asked to RSVP via phone or the individual doing the inviting just has to know why you can’t attend, things get stickier.

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Loyal reader Melissa B. writes:

I’ve recently come across a wedding etiquette issue that I didn’t even know was an issue, and I’d be curious to know your opinion(s) if you have an empty column slot.

Do you think it’s OK to extend a wedding invitation to someone and not invite their SO? Some call this the “no ring, no bring” policy — engaged and married couples (and committed same-sex couples) are automatically invited together, but everyone else is invited solo.

On a bridal message board I’ve been frequenting recently, I’ve read several posts from people who insist that inviting a friend without also inviting his/her significant other –- even if the bride and groom have never met the SO –- is incredibly rude. Others say you should allow all singles to bring a guest of their choice, be it a serious boyfriend, a new girlfriend, a platonic roommate, or someone they met at the hotel bar last night. One poster said she’d rather not be invited at all than be invited solo since that was clearly a “second-class” invitation. But other brides say that they’ve used “no ring, no bring” to shorten their guest list and think it’s a perfectly acceptable policy.

I had no idea this was so controversial! Although my boyfriend and I have been together two years and have lived together for the past six months, I’ve been invited to two weddings in the past year where the invitation was addressed just to “Melissa B.,” not to “Melissa B. & Boyfriend” or “Melissa B. & Guest.” I went to both weddings, shared a hotel room with my college girlfriends, and had a great time.

It honestly never occurred to me to be mad that my boyfriend hadn’t been invited too — he’d never met either couple, and he probably wouldn’t have gone if he had been invited (airfare is expensive and we’re both on pretty tight budgets). But now I’m realizing that there are a lot of folks who think that inviting someone alone, especially if they have a known SO, is incredibly offensive.

What’s your take? Should the boyfriends/girlfriends of guests automatically be invited, whether or not the bridal couple knows them? Should all single guests be allowed to bring a date of their choice? Or is “no ring, no bring” an OK rule of thumb if you need to keep your guest list in line?

Twistie: What we have here is a failure across several different groups to understand the concept of the Social Unit. Basically, any couple that is married, engaged, or cohabiting (gay or not) is a Social Unit. That means that, yes, your live-in boyfriend should have been invited to the weddings. How long you have lived together and whether or not the happy couple had met him make no difference.

Never teh Bride: Hell, I have friends who’ve been with their SOs forever and are staunchly opposed to the notion of cohabitation (not the mention matrimony, oddly) and I still sent all parties involved invitations. It just seemed like the nice thing to do…besides, I don’t know anyone who likes to sit alone at a wedding! But I’m also lucky in that I happen to know my friends’ SOs and their names.

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