Ack! What to do when your SO belongs in Etiquette Hell?

In My Humble Opinion
221

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Damned if I know. Nothing I guess. I just see the invitations as a courtesy to the guests. A lot of other people seem to see the whole thing as a cart blanche excuse for the couple to be as narcissistic, and controlling, and greedy and attention seeking as possible.
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As the host of your own wedding, what did you get out of it?

Did it make you feel “narcissistic, and controlling, and greedy and attention seeking”?

Why did you bother extending the courtesy (?) of invitations?

222

[QUOTE=Ca3799]
As the host of your own wedding, what did you get out of it?

Did it make you feel “narcissistic, and controlling, and greedy and attention seeking”?

Why did you bother extending the courtesy (?) of invitations?
[/QUOTE]

It wasn’t my choice. I just wanted to go to a justice of the peace.

223

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
There’s a false dichotomy being represented here. Not wearing a suit does not equal “dressing like a slob.” You can be neatly and nicely dressed without wearing a striped confomity noose around your neck.
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Are you saying that it’s important in some occasions to be nicely dressed, and not dressed like a slob? Why are you trying to set up fashion rules? Why should it matter to anyone else if I’m neatly or nicely dressed? Screw them! It’s the real me that counts, not the fact that I’m dressed like a slob.

224

By the way, back to the OP - I don’t understand this slavish devotion to comfort and/or to my personal image that some of the people in this thread seem to have, where it seems to be an affront to your soul to be asked to wear a special type of outfit. I think your husband should make the effort to wear the clothes indicated on the invitation, or that would make you happy. It’s one day out of his life. I fail to see why it would be such a big deal that he would refuse to wear the clothes that you are asking him to wear.

I find it ironic that people say “clothes don’t matter, so I will absolutely refuse to wear outfit X.” If clothes really don’t matter, then why would it make such a difference to you that you have to wear outfit X?

225

[QUOTE=Arnold Winkelried]
By the way, back to the OP - I don’t understand this slavish devotion to comfort and/or to my personal image that some of the people in this thread seem to have, where it seems to be an affront to your soul to be asked to wear a special type of outfit. I think your husband should make the effort to wear the clothes indicated on the invitation, or that would make you happy. It’s one day out of his life. I fail to see why it would be such a big deal that he would refuse to wear the clothes that you are asking him to wear.

I find it ironic that people say “clothes don’t matter, so I will absolutely refuse to wear outfit X.” If clothes really don’t matter, then why would it make such a difference to you that you have to wear outfit X?
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If I don’t own a suit, I shouldn’t have to buy one. A guest should not be required to shell out a cent.

226

If I give a party, it’s so people can participate in whatever the party is. If they don’t want to participate, they don’t want to come.

I gave a tea party the other day. No dress code, but if someone showed up with the idea of informing us all that they hated tea and would never drink it, at the very least we would wonder why they were at a tea party. At most, we would see it as disrespectful – this person has gone out of her way to show her contempt for your mode of entertaining, when your only crime was to invite her to a party.

Similarly, if you don’t want to dress formally, why would you attend a formal event? Nobody’s putting a gun to your head. It would be like going to an opera when you don’t like music.

The hosts aren’t ordering the guests to dress a certain way. The guests are hosting a formal ceremony and party to celebrate their wedding, and asking people if a formal ceremony and party is something they’d like to attend.

227

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
If I don’t own a suit, I shouldn’t have to buy one. A guest should not be required to shell out a cent.
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That’s silly. My brother’s getting married in August and he’s inviting people from out of town. I doubt he’s paying their air fare, and I doubt they expect him to. (He may be paying for their lodging.) When I go to a party, I don’t expect them to pay for my taxi fare. Some expense may be involved in taking part in a particular style of entertaining. (This does not include such gross practices as the “money tree” or other ways of wringing money out of one’s guests for one’s personal emolument.) A guest who can’t afford to go to a party should politely decline. It happens to the best of us.

228

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
If I don’t own a suit, I shouldn’t have to buy one. A guest should not be required to shell out a cent.
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Am I wrong in thinking that most men do own a suit? Thus, in general, expecting a grown man to wear a suit is not really expecting him to have to go out and buy something? It’s hardly the hosts’ fault if you don’t have one. Every guy I know has one, if for nothing else but weddings and funerals. Younger guys have them for job interviews. It’s a standard garment. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it is an assumption I’m walking around with, so maybe others are too.

What would you wear if someone you respected died and you knew everyone was going to wear a black suit to the funeral?

229

I believe that would be obvious.

His cleanest black tee and a pair of Birkenstocks. Everyone knows that funerals are for the living anyways, since the dead dude isn’t exactly in a position to care.

230

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
Am I wrong in thinking that most men do own a suit?
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Yes.

231

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Yes.
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Cite, please.

232

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
Am I wrong in thinking that most men do own a suit? Thus, in general, expecting a grown man to wear a suit is not really expecting him to have to go out and buy something? It’s hardly the hosts’ fault if you don’t have one. Every guy I know has one, if for nothing else but weddings and funerals. Younger guys have them for job interviews. It’s a standard garment. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it is an assumption I’m walking around with, so maybe others are too.

What would you wear if someone you respected died and you knew everyone was going to wear a black suit to the funeral?
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I’d wear whatever I felt like. The dead person wouldn’t care. The last funeral I went to was as a pallbearer for my aforementioned brother-in-law – the one who wore an NRA T-shirt to my wedding. I think I just wore slacks and a dress shirt. Plus I shaved.

233

[QUOTE=MsWhatsit]
Cite, please.
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What an asinine thing to demand a cite for.

234

[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
If I give a party, it’s so people can participate in whatever the party is. If they don’t want to participate, they don’t want to come.

I gave a tea party the other day. No dress code, but if someone showed up with the idea of informing us all that they hated tea and would never drink it, at the very least we would wonder why they were at a tea party. At most, we would see it as disrespectful – this person has gone out of her way to show her contempt for your mode of entertaining, when your only crime was to invite her to a party.

Similarly, if you don’t want to dress formally, why would you attend a formal event? Nobody’s putting a gun to your head. It would be like going to an opera when you don’t like music.

The hosts aren’t ordering the guests to dress a certain way. The guests are hosting a formal ceremony and party to celebrate their wedding, and asking people if a formal ceremony and party is something they’d like to attend.
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That’s missing a fairly crucial point, though. I mean, if I choose to have a black vinyl party next week, those who aren’t interested will be free to decline the invitation, no hard feelings. The following week I could have a silly hat party, or whatever.

Not so easy with a wedding. It’s a lot harder to decline an invitation to a close friend’s wedding simply because they’re being an arrogant idiot and trying to tell you what to wear. That’s why I still feel my only mistake (regarding my first wedding) was to be an ass and attempt to tell a couple of my important guests what they should not wear (see upthread). It was utterly cretinous on my behalf - it obviously made them happy to dress in a particular manner, and who the hell was I to tell them otherwise?

Thankfully, they ignored me and wore what they wanted to wear. I got the pleasure and privilege of their company, which was all that was really important. They wore their kilts, which they wanted to do. I’d have been horrified if my own stupid attempts to dictate their dress code had deprived me of their company on my wedding day.

235

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
What an asinine thing to demand a cite for.
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So, no cite forthcoming, then?

I’d say it’s a pretty asinine thing to posit a factual answer for in the first place, personally.

236

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
If I don’t own a suit, I shouldn’t have to buy one. A guest should not be required to shell out a cent.
[/QUOTE]
No, you shouldn’t have to buy one. You should already own one.

There seems to be a lot of talk about what is “required” for attendance, or what a guest should “have” to do. I’m quite sure that no one is going to bar WhyNot’s husband from entering the party if he doesn’t have a tie on. It’s not about what is required by the host…it’s what the guest should require of him or herself. An adult person should have at least one set of nice clothes that they can wear to “formal” occasions, such as weddings and funerals. I may have super-cool friends who wouldn’t give a shit if I wore jeans to their weddings, but I wouldn’t do it, because I have too much respect for them not to do my best to fix myself up decently for their big occasion.

237

[QUOTE=PaulParkhead]
Thankfully, they ignored me and wore what they wanted to wear. I got the pleasure and privilege of their company, which was all that was really important. They wore their kilts, which they wanted to do. I’d have been horrified if my own stupid attempts to dictate their dress code had deprived me of their company on my wedding day.
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Well, most guests have a system of priorities that puts attending their friend’s wedding above doing exactly what they please all the time.

Your friends put you in the position of choosing whether to accept their disrespect for your way of entertaining. I think they were rude to put you in that position; it’s gracious of you to accept it, and fine, in retrospect, to realize that you would have preferred to have an informal wedding, but it doesn’t invalidate the concept.

238

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
I have too much respect for them not to do my best to fix myself up decently for their big occasion.
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This is the key. Funerals aren’t for the dead person, they’re part of the ritual to help the family grieve and move on. Weddings are about witnessing someone else’s lifelong union. In that situation, you are doing it to facilitate the ritual for someone else, to whom the process is important. If it will enhance the spirit of the event, a polite person will try to dress in a way that’s appropriate to the occasion. It’s basically the same rationale as wearing a costume to a Halloween party, in sentiment if not in degree. You do it because it you want the event to be harmonious and because really, what does it cost you? It’s important to someone else. What are you trying to prove by deliberately defying what would make another person happy, at no real price for yourself?

Surely, Diogenes, there are things that other people who care about you do to make you happy that they consider unnecessary, irrational, frivolous, or selfish of you. It’s called compromise. Most adults are capable of doing it. Why dig in your heels and be disagreeable? Why do something that you know shows disrespect to someone, even if TO YOU it’s not important? It seems perversely stubborn to refuse to do something like this, which truly does not force you to go against some moral principle.

Someone should do a survey thread on if most men have suits.

239

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
If I don’t own a suit, I shouldn’t have to buy one. A guest should not be required to shell out a cent.
[/QUOTE]
That’s just silly. Any party you go to will require some expense, as matt_mcl pointed out. If you go to a potluck, the host might ask you to bring food. I’ll have to pay for my transportation there. If the party is at a restaurant, I’ll expect to have to pay for my meal. If I go to a work party, I might have to pay for my alcohol. I don’t expect everything in life to be free. If I go to a wedding or a baby shower, I’ll most likely be expected to bring a gift. etc. etc.

If your argument is that a suit is too expensive for you, then that’s fine. But saying that guests should not be expected to have to spend anything to attend a party, that’s just bizarre.

Tell me, at your wedding, did you expect people to dress “neatly and nicely”? When you went to the funeral, did you take the trouble to dress “neatly and nicely”?

At my wedding, people wore what they wanted to. That doesn’t mean I walk around with a chip on my shoulder and when someone else asks me to wear a tuxedo (as I did at my brother’s wedding) I am going to call them control freaks. I didn’t want to own a tuxedo so I just rented one. It wasn’t a huge ordeal, and the fact that some people would consider that to be a huge ordeal still astounds me.

240

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
Someone should do a survey thread on if most men have suits.
[/QUOTE]

Weigh in, dudes. I hope this doesn’t create too much of an observer effect on the poll thread, because I really am curious about this question. Might just be yet another one of my assumptions is proven incorrect.