If nobody ever calls anybody on etiquette faux pas, how is anybody going to know what’s considered good etiquette and what’s not?
Not everyone reads Emily Post and Miss Manners religiously, and not everyone has had the benefit of parents who are versed in all areas of etiquette. I’ve learned a lot about etiquette from reading threads like this—and the people who have made the errors which are described never hear about it, so it’s not like anyone’s feelings are hurt. Our cheeks may burn when we recognize mistakes we ourselves have made in the stories that are told, but the same thing happens when we recognize a UL that we have passed along being debunked in GQ.
podkayne -exactly.
Etiquette can be used(and often is) as a weapon to no good purpose, but to decry poor manners behooves us all. Civility is waning as it is–some standards need to be kept.
The argument of course is what are those standards!
May I ask a wedding etiquette question? (Hopefully I’m not committing an etiquette breach in an etiquette thread!)
I’m not engaged or planning a wedding at all in the near future, but I’ve always been kind of leaning towards a quasi-elopment someday in the indistince future, along the lines of going away somewhere with both sets of parents and probably no one else. In that case, how does one handle announcements and such so that it doesn’t look like one is asking for presents? Obviously, you have to let everyone know somehow that you got married. But I wouldn’t want to do anything inappropriateor to offend anyone (more than running away to get married and not inviting them to a wedding that they really wouldn’t want to attend anyway would offend them).
A regular wedding announcement, I believe, only announces your name, who you married, and the date. There is no fishing for gifts, and people can send you gifts or money or not without feeling like they are expected to do so.
What would be a breach of etiquette (and appear to be fishing for presents) is if you included registry information with that announcement.
The first example only says to people, “Hey we got married and wanted you to know!”
The second one says, “Hey we got married and here’s a list of stuff we want you to get for us!”
If a bride doesn’t know anyone well enough that is not her mother to throw her a shower, she probably doesn’t know anyone well enough to invite them to her shower. Who are you going to invite?
That’s my problem with these things - shower invites for people you barely know. I’m not a big gift person to start with (giving or receiving). Work tends to be the worst for this sort of thing, I have just stopped going to work related weddings/showers unless I already see the person outside of work.
I get that wedding invites aren’t supposed to have the registry info. How do you let people know where you’re registered, then? Are they supposed to guess?
Word of mouth. Registries are common, and if people want to know where you are registered, they can ask the couple or close relative (note that this is only common in the US - I believe in at least parts of the UK it is acceptable to put registry info in the invitation).
Ya know, I sort of the thought the point of etiquette was to make people more comfortable and at ease - not for a bunch of people to titter behind their hands at the mistakes their “friends” have made.
Humans have passed judgement on other humans since time began. Manners are intended to make others feel at ease, so to speak(Miss Manners is actually quite funny about that definition)–etiquette is a codified set of rules regarding behavior in society. It may well make you UNcomfortable.
We live in very free and easy times–none of us would make it in Victorian England (hell, I wouldn’t make it in 1950 suburbia). Some of us would like to keep some of the finer aspects of civilized society going. To do so requires commonly held ideas of what the standards are–hence this thread.
I see no wrong in discussing the points of etiquette–why not here? I see no tittering-more eye rolling that anything else.
Re: wedding anouncements. No problem with sending out these–if the recipients have to think about who Edna and Peter are, though, your list is too extensive!
They are just like birth announcements–there should be no mention of any registry of any kind anywhere on the announcement. Traditionally, these have been very formal and engraved etc. I have no idea what your budget etc is, so I make no calls as to what type of announcement you send. If it involves crayons, a Xerox machine and glue…yikes! (just kidding)
Registry information can be sent out with the shower invitation; since the shower isn’t thrown by the bride, it isn’t tacky for whomever is throwing the shower to let everyone know where the bride is registered.
If for whatever reason you are not invited to the shower (since it is usually a girls-only affair) you can easily find out by contacting the couple, their families, or their wedding party.
The reason you don’t include registry information in the wedding invitation is the same reason you don’t ever say “no gifts please” in any kind of invitation, even if it’s just a birthday party. You are supposed to be inviting your friends and relatives to celebrate your happy day with you, not fishing for gifts; thus it’s considered poor form to assume you’re getting some, much less saying, “Here’s what I’d like you to buy me!”
It’s the same reason you pretend to want to go to the wedding just to celebrate with the couple on their Happy Day…when really you just want free food and that open bar.
While we’re on shower/gift etiquette, remember that everybody who’s invited to the shower should be invited to the wedding. Otherwise, it REALLY looks like gift grubbing (ie, you can come to the small little party and give us gifts, but you can’t come to the big party where we feed you and get you drunk).
Often showers are held to celebrate with people who won’t be at the wedding - due to distance or logistics. Or coworkers. While I abhor co-worker showers, there are a lot of people who feel they are a necessary thing - and having a coworker shower doesn’t obligate you to invite all your coworkers. We threw a shower for a girlfriend who got married out of state in a very small (20 person) family affair. The shower was as big as the wedding.
Also, the Bride (and Groom and families) have control over the wedding guest list. But she doesn’t have control over the shower guest list. Insisting that so-and-so is invited to the shower, or that so-and-so is not invited to the shower is as gauche as holding the shower yourself. Hopefully, whomever throws you a shower will be close enough to you to run over the list with you. But just because your friend threw a suprise shower for fifty people - thirty of whom you didn’t intend to invite to your wedding, doesn’t mean you need to call the printer and order more invitations.
Yes. Thank you. How is it that you always seem to be able to say these things much better than I can? Perhaps I’ll send you a hand-written note in appreciation!
You know, there seems to be the attitude among the bridezilla set that, “It’s My Day! I can do whatever I want!” without considering how their actions appear to others, how other people’s feelings can get hurt, or a variety of other considerations we normally make. Being a bride doesn’t give a woman the right to be rude or inconsiderate.
I was going to say the bit about not inviting people to the shower who aren’t invited to the wedding, but I see it’s already been mentioned. The exception, in my opinion, is an office – if co-workers know you’re getting married and they aren’t invited to the wedding but they WANT to throw you a shower, then that’s fine. The problem comes when the bride’s friend is throwing a shower and works with the bride to get people’s names and addresses, and some of those people aren’t invited to the wedding. Then (and I’ve had this happen) it feels like “I know you well enough to ask you to give me stuff, but not well enough to have you come celebrate my marriage at my expense.”
It’s one thing if, because of distance or something, people cannot attend the wedding (but have been invited) but can attend a shower. It’s also acceptable if a group of people decide on their own to throw a shower for a bride who has not invited them to her wedding. It’s not acceptable for a bride to ask (via the shower-thrower) people to shower her with gifts but not come to the wedding. That’s my take on it, anyway.
My own inadvertent etiquette breach: after my wedding, I diligently wrote thank-you notes, but I seem to have bad karma with the post office. I got many of “the Calls” from people I know I had sent thank-yous to; I had to re-write-and-send notes to about a third of my guests (some of the originals had gone out in big batches). I still don’t know what happened, but I feel bad that my guests were left wondering about their gifts.
Oh, and about registry info: it’s becoming common to include in the invitation a card or something that has the web address for the couple’s website. The website has the registry info, as well as hotel info, directions, etc. It’s a convenient way to get the information to guests without actually asking for gifts. I think it’s acceptable, etiquette-wise; I did it for my wedding (4 years ago), and my grandparents thought it was a great idea. And they are big on manners, let me tell you!
The mother of the bride is not supposed to throw bridal showers. Very improper etiquette and handing them out herself? It sounds like she is desperate for gifts and/or extremely greedy. :rolleyes:
I have no sisters, the one I had died when I was 4. The only Aunt I have took family heirlooms when my grandparents died and instead of giving them to the children she had with my uncle gave them to the kids of her first husband. Who should I have gotten to do my shower? [I dint have one, we more or less eloped both times]
Ok, I admit I don’t go to weddings myself, and we got married by a city official while on vaycay in New Zealand, so I am blissfully unaware of the rules. But I still don’t understand the invite thing. She made them herself on the computer, but they were expensive? How does that work?
A good friend. It’s preferable that your shower not be thrown by a family member.
Singular, it sounds like they were professionally printed: she created them and sent the file off to be print on presumably good cardstock. Plus, if envelopes were colored, those are expensive, too.
