Martin Jacobina - Miss Manners (R) guide to a surprisingly dignified wedding

Precision marching is less important for the bridal party than maintaining the proper facial expressions: The bridegroom must look awed; the bridesmaids, happy and excited; the father of the bride, proud; and the bride, demure. If the bridegroom feels doubtful, the bridesmaids, sulky, the father, worried, and the bride, blas, nobody wants to know.

G ENTLE R EADERS:

The rules in this volume have thrice been personally test-driven. Lofty and idealistic as they may sound, there is proof that they actually work.

The first such demonstration, because it took place fifty years ago, is bound to be dismissed as coming from a time when the entire populace was so inhibited and unadventurous as to be unfailingly polite for lack of any more imaginative ideas. It was my own small but formal wedding, in my parents house.

Ten years ago, the same standards were observed at my sons wedding. As documented in the original version of this book, Miss Manners on Weddings , the greed and exhibitionism encouraged by an engorged bridal industry had already hugely influenced the format of the American wedding. It was then considered eccentric of us to ignore those practices, but the wedding guests still mention how unusually charming they found the result.

By now, however, certain forms of wedding rudeness have become so commonplace that real people actually believe that etiquette requires bragging (known as personalizing everything, including religious and civic ceremonies) and extortion (known as saving guests the trouble of deciding how to spend their own money).

Therefore, my daughter and co-author felt it necessary to supply a section called Troubleshooting to deal with fending off pressure, often from well-meaning relatives and friends, to do the wrong thing. (She also had a wicked time satirizing the timetables and injunctions she found in what she delicately calls bridal porn.)

The third instance, her own wedding, took place just a month after the completion of this revision of the book. Once again, we found that behaving well has its rewards:

• If you invite only people who you have reason to know really care about one or more members of the two families (and you may be pleasantly surprised at how many there turn out to be), they will go so far as to find their own paper and stamps to tell you whether they are able to attend.
• If you choose your attendants because they are the relatives and friends to whom you are closest (perhaps finding that they do not strictly separate along gender lines), and treat them as such throughout, they will surround you with warmthand the women will look and feel good if each is trusted to approve or select her own clothes.
• If you refrain from injecting jokes and courtship stories into the wedding ceremony (by now everybody you know has heard them anyway), you will find that your guests will be able to register the importance of the occasionand several of the women will confess that they feared for their mascara.
• If you celebrate with a real wedding receptionperhaps a festive teainstead of a festival featuring nightly dinners in a strange place, you will easily be able to accommodate a variety of food requirements, adjust to last-minute cancellations, and move around to spend time with all your guestsand you will have earned their gratitude for being able to attend your wedding and also have their vacation time and money to spend as they like.
• If you give no thought to what presents you might receive, the guests will do the thinking and you will have the fun of opening surprise packages that may turn out to be even more delightful than you might have hoped, and will be forever linked in your mind with their donors. Plus if you write your thanks immediately, in your first burst of enthusiasm, not only will you have no chore hanging over you, but you will put your generous guests into shock.
• Finally, if the bride wears a wedding dress, instead of a cartoon princesss ball gown or a taxi-dancers slinky come-on dress cut down to here and slit up to there, and the bridegroom does not attempt to spice up his formal clothes, your children will still be amused by your wedding portrait, but they will not be quite so embarrassed.
  Nor will you.

Judith Martin

W EDDINGS ARE NOW the biggest and only formal festive event (mercifully overlooking the high school prom) in most peoples lives. Multiple experiences at being wedding guests and attendants, not to mention multiple experiences of being married, have made everyone an expert on wedding etiquette.

The result is that couples with the innocent intention of having a wedding get plenty of advice. Not so much the optional kind of advice, such as You should have flags made with your entwined initials to fly over the reception hall, but the threatening kind, stated as You have to have and Everybody expects and If you want to do it right

If only these pronouncements had to do with behaving decentlynever mind properly; we will get to thatMiss Manners could retire to her porch swing and confine herself to wishing all bridal couples well (and yes, just a touch more champagne, please). But here are some of the most commonly held ideas that are passed around as etiquette:

• That the bride is granted dictatorial powers that hardly exist outside of prisons: how everyone is to look, dress, and behave, as well as control over others money;