Since you asked how we hand it : What I do is just gently point out the faux pas. Just this past Sunday we went to a family function for his side. His cousin recently eloped and we went up to the new couple to greet and congratulate them. It’s his family so my husband spoke first. I was standing right next to my husband he completely forgot to introduce me to the bride. So, I introduced myself and then privately pointed out that he should have done it. We’re not very outgoing but I do manage to do a very nice “and this is my husband Fred” so why not him? He said he was sorry he had such a block about it, would try to remember next time and that was it. No harm, no foul.
Formal occasions require formal attire.
If you* choose to attend a formal occasion that you know in advance will be a formal occasion, then good manners dictates you dress appropriately. The invitation informing you that this is a formal occasion isn’t “them telling you how you have to dress”, it’s them courteously letting you know in advance so you can be assured your wardrobe choices are appropriate. Something like a destination wedding could have just about any kind of dress code for the ceremony from bikinis to formal - there’s no social standard for how one dresses at an international destination wedding. Confusion could well exist on the part of the guests as to what sort of attire would be appropriate - a note on the invitation specifying cocktail attire is a helpful bit of information along the same lines as the address and time.
If you’re attending an event you know to be formal and you can’t be arsed to dress appropriately, then you are being rude and disrespectful. The polite thing to do if you really don’t want to dress appropriately is to decline the invitation. To accept the invitation and then deliberately dress inappropriately is obnoxious when you’re six and not any more attractive in an adult. It’s not principled, it’s rude and childish. Principled would be declining the invitation in the first place if you truly don’t want to wear formal attire. Accepting the invitation and then dressing inappropriately is essentially saying “Screw what you want out of your special event! Your wishes are totally immaterial to my whims! This is all about me and my absolute comfort!” (or possibly it’s saying “I’m not socially aware and adult enough to know any better than this!” but that’s embarassing and awkward for WhyNot as much as her spouse and not any more polite). Some people are okay with this attitude, others are not. In either case, it’s not a happy way to start out a relationship with people who are going to be extended family from now on.
Sometimes people want to have a fancy party. Wanting a fancy party is totally their perogative - it’s not being demanding or high-maintenance or BrideZilla or elitist or any other of the host of perjorative terms that get trotted out by people who don’t want to wear a freaking tie (or pantyhose for the ladies) for a couple of hours - it’s knowing how they want to celebrate their occasion. Lots of people like to dress up - it makes them happy (at least occasionally). Wearing sweatpants and a wifebeater to their fancy party when you know they wanted to do the dress up thing is disrespectful to them and therefore rude - if you didn’t want to play dress up with them, you should have declined their invitation. Deliberately dressing inappropriately is sort of like accepting an invitation to (for example) a wine tasting and then spending the whole evening making snide comments about how pretentious wine fanciers are or lecturing on the evils of alcohol consumption. If you didn’t want to play the game as indicated in the invitation, why did you come at all? All you’re doing is making the people around you uncomfortable (including, in this specific case, your wife - who’s feelings you should be respectful of). That’s being an asshole in my book.
*By “you” I mean the generic you, of course.
Yes, it’s a terribly slippery slope once one starts making these sorts of demands on one’s wedding guests.
And just think how offended the nudists must be, to be told to wear clothes in such a demeaning and unacceptable fashion. Next thing you know, they’ll be insulting their guests by providing cutlery at the reception, which is a blatant insult to those of us who prefer to eat our food with bare hands. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to discover that the couple has the chutzpah to expect that their guests will shower them with gifts and money as a token of appreciation for being herded into cocktail attire before being dragged kicking and screaming to this celebration of their love for each other.
The nerve!
I don’t see these as the only choices. It may not be the case that everyone there expects her to dictate/control her spouse’s choices. I sure wouldn’t.
In the case of (A), I would not assume she approved of it. I’d assume he was either clueless, or headstrong. Maybe they had a fight about it and he prevailed. Maybe she didn’t care because he’s his own person and she’s not in charge of his choices. Maybe she doesn’t know any better herself. Who knows? I would NOT assume she approved it or was too much a pussy to “demand” he wears the right thing.
In the case of (B), I might pity her, but I might also wonder why she had to make her husband look worse in front of everyone. Everyone can see what he’s wearing. Why make a point of telling everyone she personally hates it and is disappointed in it?
I sure wouldn’t pity her marriage. I know several happy marriages where one spouse isn’t very socially gracious (sometimes both). I don’t think these marriages would be improved by one of them browbeating the other into a different set of priorities when they get invited somewhere. Yes, sometimes they successfully sway them into dressing/acting normal for the coupla hours, and hooray for that, but failing to do so isn’t a sign of marital trouble. I guess I’m biased because I know more than my fair share of nerdy weird academics. I have certainly muttered “I cannot believe he is wearing that fanny pack again” multiple times without ever blaming the wife for it.
Well, WhyNot, I don’t judge my friend by her SO’s dress at my wedding. If that’s any comfort. More than that, since I think it’s clear I also don’t look down on him for it, is that not a single person who has commented on my photos has said a thing about HER.
I would suggest that your husband is under an extreme amount of stress due to the upcoming dissertation deadline. This is normal. While reason and consideration might be worth a try under normal circumstances, maybe not now. For this reason I would give him a pass. Explain to the relatives that he is somewhat “afflicted” temporarily, just like you would do if he had been physically ill. If as time goes on he doesn’t mellow and the situation continues to arise, explain that he “is an academic” with a gentle and affectionate rolleyes.
One thing I am assuming here is that the family hosting the wedding and the majority of the guests are not actually Mexican. Not being sensitive to cross-cultural dress expectations is a whole different level of rude.
This is the sort of spurious, self-centered rationale that anti-manners people always spout. I want to be comfortable! I don’t want to wear anything I don’t like! Me me me! The truth is, a lot of people don’t wear “nice” clothes “once a decade,” they (we) wear them a lot – shoes 'n everything!
More spurious reasoning. Clothes don’t give the “true value” of a person, nor is preferring appropriate dress tantamount to judging people only on appearance. But clothes are a means of communication, just as grooming is, and dressing appropriately to the occasion says “I am dressed in special clothes because I cared enough about you and your event to make an effort in how I dress to reflect the specialness of this occasion.” Dressing inappropriately – especially dressing down when you know everyone else will be dressing up – says “I didn’t care enough about you or your event to make any sort of special effort; you should be happy I’m here at all.”
For this reason, dress is especially important on ocasions when – and it appears all of these apply in this case – (1) you are meeting people for the first time, who aren’t going to know how super-special you are, so completely amazing that you are excused from general societal rules that apply to everyone else; (2) you are in a foreign country where, like it or not, you are an ambassador for your own country, and dressing inappropriate will convey that you are too stupid to know local custom, too lazy to find out, or too selfish to care; or (3) you are attending an event of some size and at which many of the guests will be unknown, so that it may be that all the hosts ever know about you, other than whether you come at all, is whether or not you made an effort to dress appropriately.
Ignoring all of that, or dismissing it as superficial, reflects a lack of understanding of nonverbal communication and how important it can be. The idea that refusing to disregard such nonverbal cues makes one a bad person is simply ridiculous.
Since it’s important to you, so important you fear he will embarrass you if he doesn’t dress appropriately, I would cast it in those terms so that he does not fail to understand that this is a Big Deal to you and his decision is therefore a Big Deal as well. “I’m asking you to do this because it’s very important to me. I know it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world but it’s only for a few hours and it would mean a lot to me.” If he then continues to place his comfort over your preferences, then IMO you have the grounds for a discussion that is a hell of a lot bigger than this one issue: A discussion about affection and respect, or the lack thereof. If there are sleeping dogs lying around on those issues – and I’m certainly not saying there are – you might want to decide whether this is worth waking them over, because once you make it clear this is extremely important to you and he does it anyway, those dogs are awake.
Nothing. He is an adult. You are not responsible for his intentional poor behavior and apologizing for it implies that you are. You dress appropriately – thereby showing that, yes, you do know how and, yes, it is just him – and you go and have a fabulous time. 
It’s not really clear to me that WhyNot’s husband is insisting on his right to dress as a vagabond as opposed to his right not to wear a suit. If he does in fact wish to dress as a vagabond, and I were at the wedding, and WhyNot dresses appropriately, I’d assume deliberateness on his part. (And smile, because I have friends from college who lean in that direction). If, however, he merely insists that he doesn’t have to wear a suit, but will wear a dress shirt and nice khakis, so that really he’s just slightly underdressed, I might assume budgetary issues were at work (as well as insensitivity to social norms).
I want to say that I wouldn’t comment in either case, but I have to admit remembering giving my brother’s feet an amused look before our grandmother’s funeral. He had holes in his socks. I didn’t care that the shoes were vaguely worn or were brown, to his black suit. (I was also amused that my dad was the only male wearing a suit who still had the coat on when leaving the church after lunch–many discarded them in their cars after the cemetary portion of the funeral, which was before lunch).
I don’t see what the big deal is. I’ve never been to a wedding that didn’t require some level of dressing up. It’s kind of expected --> someone’s special day = them often wearing big pretty expensive dress, suit/tuxedo = guests looking decent too. I’d feel like a total asshole if I showed up to a wedding in jeans instead of a dress, unless the bride and groom told me to wear jeans. And in a wedding that was paying (mostly) for me to go to a foreign country, I’d automatically assume if they’re gonna drop that kind of money, they want a reasonably nice wedding. How many people have really been to weddings where they wore jeans/shorts/etc? And what “kind” of person had that wedding --> your coworker at the business or your hippe/nonconformist friends who are cool but a rare find?
My dad hates hates hates wearing suits and ties, but mom buys him outfits for weddings and he puts them on without a single complaint. He wears jeans 99% of the time, but he knows when we’re going to a wedding, he’s wearing his suit. If for some reason dad was acting like an asshole and wouldnt wear it, I know mom would leave his ass at home without a second thought.
giggle
Actually, **Diogenes **doesn’t know this, but both of them *are *movie-makers! Independent documentaries, though, for him: writer/director/producer; she does something I don’t quite grok in Production.
Oh, yes, it was brutal. They used heavyweight cardstock for their invitations and everything! And that part where my brother emailed me six months before the invitations were sent out to say, “So we’re doing this wedding in Mexico, and her folks are paying for the hotel but we totally understand if you can’t afford it but we’d love to have you if you can, what’s your address so we can send you an invitation when the time is right?” - that was just horrific, especially since it gave me seven whole months to save up pin money for the plane tickets. And the sweet talk at Thanksgiving about how excited they were that we thought we were coming, but if it turned out it wouldn’t work out, they would totally understand and they love us bunches and we’ll have so much fun if it all works out? I thought we were going to have to call the authorities to determine if it was torture, like waterboarding. The bastards.
Aangelica, I totally agree. And this coming from a hippie chick who doesn’t wear nylons - evah!* (And occasional nudist, as luck would have it, Mahna Mahna.) I would be just as embarrassed if someone had worn a tuxedo to my hippies-in-the-woods wedding! I wouldn’t hate them or anything, but it would be weird, and I’d feel like a bad host for not letting them know that glitter and feather boas over tie-dye sarongs was the more appropriate choice.
And in reality, now that I’ve calmed down from my freak-out of last night, that’s pretty much how I’ll handle it, after I let him know my feelings about it. I’m not going to harp or nag. Frankly, if it’s a choice between him looking like a loon at the wedding and finishing that g-d dissertation, I’ll take the loon! (This is why I think sometimes it IS good to go to bed mad…this was a lot bigger of a deal last night.)
It’s an international potpourri - some American (her family is American), some of their friends from Spain and/or Portugal and maybe Germany, and I think maybe some people they worked with in Brazil. The only people I’ll know are our parents and the bride and groom. I don’t think my other brother is going, but I could be wrong about that.
*I’ll wear a long dress and knee highs to the wedding, or strappy sandals and no stockings. If they’re very lucky, I might shave my legs.
**Aangelica **is my new hero.
If I were as busy as it sounds like he is, I wouldn’t even want to go. It’s almost too bad he does; I bet he could ge a lot done. I second the “his dissertation is looming, he’s pretty much mentally ill” idea. I’m barely coming back to myself, and my defense was three weeks ago. I was horrible for months beforehand.
I have no advice, but I can certainly sympathize. My husband hates dressing up, and he avoids it whenever possible. He’s gotten slightly better, but it’s been an uphill battle. Of course, I hate it too, but I’m perfectly willing to do it when needed.
If you were me, and therefore, totally unhelpful, you could always threaten him: “You can go, and you can dress however you want, but I’m going to go out of my way to avoid being seen or photographed with you, because I don’t want to get paraiah dust on my nice dress.” Tell him it’s just the natural consequence of him being inappropriate, which will probably make things worse, but I find that escalating arguments like these makes them more interesting for me and takes away that feeling of helplessness. 
I can’t imagine the newly married couple will care… furthermore they probably won’t even notice. Getting married seems to take a lot of your attention elsewhere for some reason.
If the hosts are paying for the party, they can make the rules. It’s then your choice as to attend or not. The husband can go dressed as he wishes. HE’S the one who will look like the dumbass. I really doubt anyone there will say “Wow, what a free thinking, expressive individual to dress like a slob! He must be a really great guy.” :rolleyes:
It’s not that much different than going to a costume party. You can follow the rules to join in the celebration, dress as you wish to make some sort of absurd statement that no one really cares about, or just not attend.
It’s disrespectful. Geez, if it matters that much to you, don’t go.
:smack:
:smack: :smack: :smack:
Oh. My. God.
I just happened to be Swiffering the hallway, when I knocked a picture off the wall. Of he and I at *his *brother’s wedding eight years ago, where I met all of his family. And he’s wearing a TUXEDO!!! (He did not stand up, I think he *might *have been an usher.)
Oh, he’s going DOWN!
Could be worse. My husband was, for quite a long period of time, interested in going into mortuary work. To this day, he’s been known to come out, at dinner with family, with how long it takes to cremate a body/various embalming techniques/etc. He’s been kicked by me under the table so many times I think he probably doesn’t even feel it anymore.
Let us know how that works out for him.
Seriously. How is he planning on dressing. If he’s planning on dressing like a schlub, that’s one thing. If he’s planning on at least dressing nicely, then the other guests would assume that financial constraints are at work.
Certain situations call for certain attire. One would not go to an office job interview wearing shorts and a wifebeater. Not unless one does not the job in the first place. Like it or not, clothes do say something about you. Dressing appropriately shows you are aware of the etiquette of the event.
I know guys don’t really care all that much, but for most women, dressing up and looking nice is fun, especially when there’s a party!
I would suggest your hubby stay home. It seems he’s got a lot more on his plate, and this out of town wedding may cut into his dissertation work.
Give him a kiss, wish him luck on his work, and go have fun.
Heh, in our household, I’m the one giving my husband tragic and pathetic eyes when the occasion demands I wear something other than pyjama pants and a tank top or (and this is really horrible) shoes to places other than work.
Dressing appropriately = being respectful to your hosts. I know that when we got married, our invitation specified casual dress - because we were having a BBQ in the park for our wedding. We specified because we wanted to be sure our guests had all the necessary information - what day, location, what time, what to wear so as not to feel like a social maroon when you get there.
Okay, now I’m sort of embarassed. I don’t know that I’ve ever been anyone’s hero before. Do I get a cape? I think I could really look hot in a cape!
[Edna Mold]No! No capes![/EM]
It occurs to me that the “cocktail attire” might not even be the requirement of the hosts, but of the venue where the reception is being held.
I’ve been to at least one reception held at a country club where “dinner jacket is required” was mandated by the club, not by those being wed. I think there were a few guests who had to dress up from after the ceremony, actually.